8 facts about Working Overtime in Korea

Working in South Korea is fun and as well as extremely strenuous.

Koreans are really hardworking and want to achieve their goals in their life and work, as they say Paali Paali which means quickly quickly.

If you have an experience in one of the companies, the working style is stressful, like any other Asian countries but Koreans especially are famous for being workaholics.

Normally working hours are morning 8:00am to evening 18:00pm. But Overtime means working beyond the official working hours that is called OT. This OT is generally considered as paid working hours.

• The concept of working in Korean companies is to stay in the office until the boss stays. Hence such people bound to  work overtime to impress their bosses.
• Sometimes employees have deadlines approaching hence they have to do overtime to finish their work in time or before time.
• Some people are single or forced bachelor in that city, so no one waiting for them at home, they prefer sitting late in office.
• Some people want to earn money hence they do overtime
• Some people have to submit work until the next day hence they do overtime.
• Sometime people need to study and research some new Technologies hence they do OT to master the techniques or softwares etc.
• Finally some people enjoy staying at office with friends, use the office facilities and hence they do overtime

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  Mostly the stress of work and stress from boss is heavy which makes the employee to do overtime

Some companies also measure their employees performance by the amount of time they stay in the office rather than the quantity or quality of work.

At times quantity of working hours are rated higher than the quality of work submitted .

This might be stressful for the employee.

If you are working in a small company the issues might be more severe as compared to a well established company.

These facts are not for all the companies in Korea but general thinking of Asians.
Even the newspaper article in Korean Herald showed that the employees are wasting almost 50-60% of their daily working time by checking emails. I feel that is due to the long stretched working hours which are extremely monotonous.

Although I have seen many changes coming up  due to the Korean managers who have studied abroad or worked in international companies or have open mind.
Such bosses create a flexible and performance oriented working environment.