Moon sets new precedent in presidential vacations

President Moon Jae-in looks around a 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games facility in Gangwon Province, Sunday, the first day of his summer vacation. He will spend the rest of his leave at a presidential retreat in a naval base in Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province, and return to Seoul Saturday. / Courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae

By Kim Rahn

Korean employees are notorious for taking short holidays, or none at all. A recent survey by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade showed while Korean workers are given an average of 15 days of paid leave a year, they actually use only 7.9 of those days, much shorter than the OECD average of 20.6 days.

The survey also showed 33.5 percent of the 1,000 respondents plan to use fewer than five of their given vacation days per year, while 11.3 percent said they would not use a single day. On why they decide not to use the leave fully, 44.8 percent cited the business climate where almost all other employees do not do so either, and 43.1 percent said they have too much work to do, when multiple replies were allowed.

Amid this backdrop, President Moon Jae-in’s summer vacation has gained attention. He promised he would spend all of his paid vacation days this year and announced his summer vacation plans beforehand, the first President to do so.

He headed for PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, Sunday morning, and looked around the facilities under construction for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games there. Then he moved to a presidential retreat at a naval base in Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province, Monday. He will return to Seoul Aug. 5.

Visitors look around the former presidential summer house “Cheongnamdae” in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. Former President Roh Moo-hyun opened it to the public in 2003. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Vacation as a break from work

Former President Park Geun-hye writes “memory of Jeo Island,” on a beach on the island in South Gyeongsang Province, in July 2013 during her first summer holiday after her inauguration. / Courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae

In Korea, it is usually not known how many paid vacations a president has and how many days a week he or she actually works. It was later known former President Park Geun-hye barely had an official schedule on Wednesdays, and thus, virtually had a day off every week.

A president’s summer holiday plans — where he or she would go and for how long — have also been confidential for security reasons. Cheong Wa Dae usually disclosed where and how former presidents spent their holidays after the vacations ended.

Due to their special status and their duty to take charge of state affairs around the clock, presidents limited their summer holidays to usually two to five days and did not officially take days off for the rest of the year. They usually went on their summer holidays from the end of July to early August, the peak vacation period.

They often stayed at military facilities in the provinces, where security is guaranteed, or Cheongnamdae, a former presidential summer house in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. But former President Roh Moo-hyun opened Cheongnamdae to the public, so his successors did not use the facility. Some also chose to stay at their residence within the Cheong Wa Dae compound.

However, they also often had to delay or cancel their summer vacations owing to urgent issues such as disasters.

Moon initially planned to begin his vacation Saturday, but postponed it to Sunday following North Korea’s long-range missile launch late Friday night. He even considered further delaying the holiday or canceling it altogether, but decided not to do so, as he had pledged to take leave, a Cheong Wa Dae official said. “Because he will stay at the retreat in the naval base, the President can receive reports or make orders promptly from there in case of a security emergency,” he said.

Park spent her first summer vacation on Jeo Island in South Gyeongsang Province in 2013. The island, which was frequented by her father, former President Park Chung-hee, is the location of Cheonghaedae, another presidential summer house the name of which means “Cheong Wa Dae on the sea.” The house is now owned by the Ministry of National Defense.

Former President Roh Moo-hyun and first lady Kwon Yang-sook feed ducks at Cheongnamdae, a former presidential summer house in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, on the morning of April 18, 2003, the day he ordered it to open to the public. / Korea Times file

She spent her holidays at her residence in Cheong Wa Dae in 2014 in the aftermath of the Sewol ferry tragedy, as well as in 2015 when the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) struck. Last year, she visited Simridaesup, a bamboo forest in Ulsan.

Park’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, spent his first holiday at the retreat in Jinhae in 2008, with the first lady and their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. In 2011, he postponed his one-week holiday from July 30 to Aug. 3 to take the necessary measures to address the huge damage from the torrential rains in the central part of the country.

Lee’s predecessor, Roh, visited a military resort in Daejeon with his family for his first holiday in 2003. He stayed at his Cheong Wa Dae residence in 2004 and visited PyeongChang in 2005. In 2007, he canceled his summer vacation to monitor the rescue efforts for 21 volunteers from Saemmul Community Church who were taken hostage in Afghanistan by Taliban militants.

Holiday leave as a right

While these former presidents regarded their holiday leave as an opportunity to take a break that they could either use or not depending on the circumstances, Moon regards his leave as a right.

Lamenting the reality that most workers do not spend all of their vacation days and get enough rest, Moon pledged during his election campaign that he would make it mandatory for workers to use all of their paid vacation days. After being elected, the President said he would spend all of his days off and encouraged public officials to follow suit, adding that doing so will also help boost domestic tourism.

In a Cabinet meeting in July, he encouraged his ministers to use all of their paid vacation days and to encourage their employees to do so as well. Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon, whose main office is at the Government Complex in Sejong but stays in Seoul two to three days a week for meetings, initially implied he would not take a holiday. “When I’m in Sejong, it is my break from Seoul, and when I’m in Seoul, it is my break from Sejong,” he told reporters.

However, due to the new climate where the President prods officials into taking holidays, Lee decided to take five days of vacation in mid-August.

Cheong Wa Dae said while there is no rule on how many vacation days a president can take, Moon has 21 days this year based on a rule for public officials. He had served as a public official for more than six years — as senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, senior secretary for social affairs and chief of staff under the Roh administration, and as a lawmaker.

On May 22, 12 days after inauguration, he took a day off and got some rest at his home in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province. As he is spending five days for his summer vacation, he now has 15 vacation days left.