In South Korea, Documenting a Divide Over Work-Life Balance

I spent much of my childhood in the United States and Canada but have lived in South Korea for all of my adult life. I have noticed one stark contrast between the places I grew up in and South Korea: people’s attitude toward work. In North America, it seems to me that people look for jobs that they are interested in or passionate about. In South Korea, people often prioritize jobs that offer prestige and better reputations.

As a reporter covering South Korea from the Seoul bureau of The New York Times, I have written about the country’s cutthroat education system. It may come as no surprise that South Korea’s work culture is also rigorous. There is a lot of data to prove this, and more than enough anecdotes about employees working extremely long hours. But to have the nation’s largest companies go on the record about implementing longer working hours for managers — a response to a downturn in business — is another thing altogether.

The news about longer hours appeared on my radar in the spring. Through online forums, and later from the local news, I learned that some influential South Korean companies were advocating longer hours, and in some cases, even encouraging managers to come to the office six days a week.

Rich Barbieri, the deputy business editor in Seoul, approached me about taking on the story. The news could serve as a peg and hook into a deep-dive enterprise on South Korea’s current and former labor laws. This looking-glass type of article is my favorite to report and write. Telling a story with real voices and experiences is how, I think, we preserve our humanity in our journalistic quest to record the present for posterity.

The first task was to find companies that were willing to go on the record about