As I mentioned in previous posts, I love to watch Korean TV shows and one of the things that stood out to me about the lifestyle of people in South Korea is the life of office workers. Among the things I observed, I will talk about some of the more prominent ones.
First of all, Koreans have very long working hours. In addition to the regular eight hours, the employees are expected to work overtime almost everyday, sometimes as late as 10 pm. Moreover, the employees are usually not allowed to get off work till their boss has left. As a result, sometimes people stay overtime even when they are not working.
The working environment is very stressful. There is constant competition between employees and even between the different departments. Koreans put a lot of emphasis on what their boss think about them and will go out their way to be in their boss' good books as it often guarantees them promotions and bonuses.
I have also noticed that employees are treated differently by their boss inside and outside the office. Inside the office, the bosses tend to put a lot of pressure on the employees and tend not to show their friendly and considerate sides. However, office dinners are very common in Korea, where the employees will have dinner together with their boss and bond over drinks.
In fact drinks and evening entertainment play a very important in the lives of office workers in Korea. Other than bonding with fellow employees over drinks, a lot of business is also done over drinks. Employees are often required to entertain important clients and thus maintain good relationship with them.
Also, new employees tend to get bullied by the older employees are often made to do the menial tasks. They are also made to do most of the work and rarely get recognition for it. There is also discrimination against female employees in the office. They are often viewed as weak and incompetent, which is a result of the patriarchal Korean society.
Television shows tend to exaggerate facts most of the time, so I did some research about the working environment in Korea and I found similar reports from different websites.
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