Conversation Partner: Do-jun Kim
Date/Time: Thursday 27 August 2015, 9:30-10:30 am
Do-jun and I had a bit of a sad conversation this morning.
One of the executives at his job fell down a flight of stairs and is
unconscious in the hospital. His brain is swollen and the hospital can not
operate until the swelling goes down. They just have to wait. Do-jun told me
about how the executive was known as a work-aholic and that he was essential to
the inner workings of the company. The tragedy is forcing a lot of Do-jun’s
colleagues reevaluate the amount of importance that they place on their work instead
of their personal lives. Apparently, it is
common for Koreans to work 2-3 hours of overtime everyday just to show their
boss that they are serious about the work. According to a study, Korean’s work
more hours on average and take less vacation time than most other workers world
wide. I told Do-jun that while many US American’s suffer from overwork (myself
among them) it is much less mainstream and institutionalized than in South
Korea. These types of institutionalized cultural differences are the most
interesting to me.
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