Korean Job Discussion Forums

Captain Corea · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Location: Seoul

It's well known that Korean assault statistics are skewed because of the practice of blood money. What "should" be filed as a police report is held off until police mediate a settlement. This is often done in various criminal instances here.

So, with that knowledge in mind, and how many people I see working overtime but not getting paid, I am extremely suspicious of working hour stats here.

If I can't trust the stats in one area, why should I trust them in others - especially if they run counter to my experiences?

KimchiNinja · Joined: 01 May 2012 Location: Gangnam

maximmm · Joined: 01 Feb 2008

I can see that this vile thread full of lies has turned into yet another attack on the purity of the Korean land and the practices of its people. The leader of our apologist camp, SteelRails, has already made many great points - but I can see that many of you have failed to comprehend their true meaning - and this tells me that the IQ of the foreigners that dwell in our country (we are Korean through the link to our pure blooded Korean wives).

Many here quote research papers and 'facts' from the liberal and very biased western media. The true fact, however, is that here in Korea, our people work no more than the people in the west. Indeed, I'll bring you an example - Korean teachers. On average they work 8 to 9 hours a day - 5 days a week, which brings their average hours to 40-45 per week. The vacation for our teachers lasts anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks a year, by far more than an average vacation in the civilized western countries (not counting France and Germany - the communist states!).

In fact, I would venture to say that most of you know fully well the duration of the Korean teachers' working hours and the duration of their vacations. To think that you would argue against this COLD fact is preposterous.

Many people bring up the example of factory workers in Korea, but we all know that most of those factory workers consist of foreigners from Philippines and China - their working hours simply reflect the working conditions in their uncivilized countries. Indeed, in Korea, we try to make people from Philippines and China more welcome by providing them with similar working hours they would have back in their countries, with no additional pay. After all, we realize that providing them with more reasonable hours would lead to a culture shock and perhaps even cause them to panic and leave our great country.

Some people here have mentioned that we often go to special dinners after work to establish a family-like relations with our co-workers. This is true, and it has to realize that this is not a part of work - we do this because we enjoy it. We would also never force our female workers to attend these parties - they go because they enjoy drinking. They enjoy drinking even more when our higher ups pour them full shots of soju and 'beg' them to drink up before the soju spoils.

At no point do the female workers ever feel coerced and we have great fun!

Sadly, western people often misunderstand and consider this fun activity counter-productive to our working atmosphere - causing us to be less than effective the next day. Nothing could be further from the truth - after all, soju is akin to an energy drink and contrary to popular belief, it provides us with a mental energy boost - something that can often be observed during the work mornings, when we often contemplate important matters with our eyes closed.

I hope that I have been able to clarify our camp's position to the simple-minded posters that seem to to be so common on eslcafe forum. I also extend an invitation to our camp to anyone that has been enlightened by this post. Please send applications to our camp's leader - SteelRails.

Thank you - I hope you understand.

atwood · Joined: 26 Dec 2009

Mr. BlackCat · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Location: Insert witty remark HERE

Captain Corea · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Location: Seoul

As with most discussions on this site, I have a feeling we'd agree more in person.

TheUrbanMyth · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Location: Retired

TheUrbanMyth · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Location: Retired

Getting back to the topic of the thread...I think it's possible that it was a honest mistake and the person meant YEAR instead of month. It is a second language after all. That however still does not excuse their proofreaders/fact checkers...oh wait this is the Korean Times...never mind then.

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS

As we can see Koreans worked an average of 2090 hours in 2011 (the last year the stats are available for them. Close enough.