SEOUL, South Korea — A proposal in South Korea, one of the world’s hardest-working countries, to increase the maximum workweek to 69 hours from 52 has drawn intense backlash from younger workers and set off a raging generational debate about work-life balance.
The proposal from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration had seemed counterintuitive on its face: The government asserted that raising the weekly cap on overtime would actually give workers more flexibility, quality of life and time with their families.
The argument, laid out by South Korea’s labor minister earlier this month, was that by calculating overtime caps monthly or annually instead of weekly, workers could bank more overtime during periods when it was convenient for them to work. They could then use that saved-up time during other parts of the year to take longer vacations or parental leave.
But after a strong public outcry, including protests by unions and a torrent of opposition on social media, South Korea’s government is scrambling to walk back the proposal while vowing to do a better job listening to the country’s youth.
“Whenever I come home, my dad seems to come home late,” Hwang Joon-pyo, 22, said in an interview in his family home in Seoul, the capital. “It makes me think a lot about, ‘Could I work like that? Would I be able to do well?’”
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