Happy holidays

In 2015, more than 20 per cent of South Korea’s population spent over 60 hours a week in office

There is a spectre haunting South Korea. And it isn’t the trigger-happy, missile-testing, nuclear war-threatening neighbour to its north — it’s workaholism. This festive season, President Moon Jae-in is doing his best to curb the menace among his people. October 2 was declared a national holiday so that the weekend that goes along with Chuseok, the country’s harvest festival, can be clubbed with a string of public holidays for a whopping 10-day break.

Work, though, is a hard habit to shake. South Korea is amongst the hardest working countries in the world: In 2015, more than 20 per cent of its population spent over 60 hours a week in office, while only 9 per cent of Japanese people did so. The devotion to labour has a long history in the country. At least since the Korean War, a Confucian work ethic — hard work for the sake of society as a whole — has been fused with the idea of
nation-building. And the president’s efforts notwithstanding, at least a third of his people will continue to toil patriotically despite their entitlement to a break. The problem, though, is not merely that the president is having trouble getting his people to exercise their “right to leisure”.

The logic that made a trained, hard-working population the engine on which a successful economy built itself may have run its course. Leisure is not just important for its own sake but leads good citizens to become conspicuous consumers — a much-needed cog that makes the wheel of the market turn. Besides, the people of South Korea have certainly earned a vacation. They are at the flashpoint of a conflict between a fraternal enemy led by an unstable dynast and a belligerent superpower with an unpredictable president threatening “fields of fire”. Both for the sake of the economy and a little peace of mind, it’s time to take it easy.