Asia

Koreans really do work long hours

I just got home from work.  Yes, I spent another long evening at the office.  I intended to go in yesterday for a few hours so I didn’t have to work late tonight.  Alas, I could not drag myself into the office on such a beautiful day.  Fortunately, I think this will be the only night this week when I need to work late.  I finished a couple of big projects that have been in work for months, and I got a good start on some new material that my boss will present to the Powers That Be when he returns to the United States later this month.  I’m excited that he will be taking the fruits of my labor on a roadshow.  Today was the busiest day I have seen since I moved to my new job.  Perhaps the holiday yesterday brought everyone out en masse.  I didn’t get much done during the day other than helping people.  Spending evenings at work isn’t fun, but often it’s the only time you can find time to get the job done.
 
The October 3rd edition of BusinessWeek Magazine features a great article analyzing what most Americans already suspect–many of us work more hours than we did just a few years ago.  It’s a great article; I highly recommend giving it a read.  Its hypothesis is that although work productivity is up, and workers have more tools at their disposal than ever to get the job done, there are more managers per worker than ever, and the old style of managing employees is impeding the development of global, dynamic employee networks.  The "Old school" or Dilbert’ "Pointy Hair Boss" style of management tends to emphasize micromanaging employees, engaging in "death by meeting," requiring layer after layer of management approval, submitted in triplicate and reported ad nauseum to all stakeholders, whether they care or not.  This hinders the free flow of information between employees who collaborate through network-style organizations.  This summarization of course is caricaturized.  However, it highlights the fact that Americans continue to work longer hours, and BusinessWeek offers some practical reasons why and possible solutions to mitigate this trend.
 
There’s good news and bad news for American workers.  Although American workers now work more hours per worker than any other G-8 nation, Korean workers work 30.4% more hours than their American counterparts.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that between 1991 and 2004, Koreans worked on average 5% fewer hours, while Americans worked just 1.4% fewer hours.  According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), here are the number of hours per worker in 2004 for select countries featured in the BusinessWeek article:
  1. Korea, 2,380 hours
  2. United States, 1,825 hours
  3. Japan, 1789 hours
  4. Great Britain, 1,669 hours
  5. Germany, 1443 hours
  6. France, 1,441 hours
  7. Netherlands, 1,357 hours

I frequently hear in Korea how hard Koreans work.  I do not know what the average productivity rate is for Koreans and can’t comment on whether Koreans work harder than Americans.  Working hard is product of both productivity per hour and the number of hours worked.  However, the statistic above shows that the average Korean works long, long hours.  A friend of mine who works for a major chaebol, or Korean conglomerate, logs an average of 14-hours per day at work and works on weekends.  The good news for Koreans is that the number of hours per worker worked each year has steadily declined since 1991.  Many Koreans no longer work half days on Saturday and head home earlier. 

 

Americans also work long hours.  BusinessWeek mentions that although the number of hours worked has decreased for traditional "blue-collar" workers in recent decades, the number has actually increased for office workers.  That’s why many of us feel like we’re working more than ever.  As America transforms from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, the tendency to work longer hours in the office intensifies.  I just hope we never work as many hours as Koreans do.

A recap of events

I won’t lie.  This has been a difficult week for me.  It seems as if my Pusan trip set me back a few days, and I spent the entire week at work trying to catch up.  I got back to the office, and by Tuesday my other colleagues left.  Someone new is working with me now, but they are still orienting themselves to the office.  I was the only veteran staff member in the office this week.  As a result, I worked until after 9 p.m. on Thursday.  On Friday evening I also left late for work.  Our job portfolios also changed, and I started working on my new assignment and had to train the new person on what I was doing before.  It’s a pseudo-promotion that makes me backup supervisor, but it also means that I won’t be out of the office visiting Americans as much as I was.  At work it seemed as if every couple minutes or so I was handed a new, critical task to complete, and I could only finish them every 5-10 minutes, meaning the tasks continued to pile up.  Metaphorically, it feels like shoveling mud in a collapsing ditch or draining water from a sink boat.
To make matters worse, I’ve also been busy as chair of our community association trying to settle some vexing problems.  We’ve been trying to land a new cafeteria vendor for months, and this week we finally found a couple of great candidates.  Unfortunately, another vendor suddenly abandoned their location.  Their contract was up for renewal, and I had thought we had successfully negotiated a follow-on agreement.  However, I was astounded when they let the lease lapse without renewing.  We had no choice but to lock them out, and now I have the very unpleasant task of extricating ourselves from this vendor.  Not only does the association stand to lose out on substantial revenues, but the divorce could be messy.  We may have to call in the legal eagles to take care of the situation.  Plus, we have to go through the arduous task of finding a new vendor to take over the site.  This is not the start I wanted to have as chair.  If I can get through the next six months and take care of these vendor problems, I’ll consider my job a success.  It will get done, somehow.
On Friday, after I got home from work, I passed on writing my nightly blog entry and crashed for the night.  Saturday morning I went for two more negotiations, one with a potential cafeteria vendor and the other for a new business center for our community.  These negotiations were fruitful.  In the afternoon, I took my family for Korean food, and we enjoyed a Columbus Day parade and festivities (yes, the Armed Forces in Korea still celebrate Columbus Day).  The cover band performed a medley of Tina Turner classics; the singer sounded just like Tina Turner.  We rested at home yesterday evening.  Today, we met up with a good friend we met while we were in Virginia.  He lives in Taiwan and had come to visit his Korean girlfriend.  She joined us, along with another friend from Taiwan.  We ate Mexican food for lunch (they said they can’t find good Mexican food in Taiwan) and spent a few hours at our home talking and drinking soju and Bailey’s Irish Cream.  It was delectable.  Later, I dropped our friends off in Insadong.  They suggested we come for a visit to Taiwan.  It apparently only costs about $300 by air from Seoul to Taipei, and we would have a free place to stay.  After this week, their offer sounds tempting!
Fortunately, tomorrow I have the day off and am planning a guy’s night out with a few people tomorrow night.  If I don’t post a blog entry tomorrow night, you’ll know why.

Our Pusan trip

OK, here it is at last–a description of our Pusan trip.  If you recall, I went down to Pusan last Wednesday via KTX train, and my family joined me on Thursday evening.  The train terminates at Pusan Station, and we took taxis from the station to Haeundae, a beach resort town about 14 kilometers east of Pusan.  In November, the BEXCO Mall and Convention Center in Haeundae will serve as the epicenter for the APEC Summit, arguably the single biggest event of the year in Korea.
 
On Wednesday evening when I arrived in Pusan, I didn’t do much other than wander the streets of Haeundae.  It’s a fun town straddling the beach.  Haeundae offers shades of Waikiki, Hawaii with a sandy crescent-shaped beach, high-rise hotels, and a boardwalk that stretches the entire length of the beach.  The beach area is flat, but to the east and west of the beach the Korean coastline grows mountainous and rocky, forming a nice, picturesque coastline.  Haeundae features some western restaurants, including Outback Steakhouse and McDonald’s.  It has a fish and produce market as well as a small shopping area.  Haeundae is not as trendy or upscale as Seoul, although the hotels and beach area are first class.
 
On Thursday and Friday, I worked.  When my family came in around 6 p.m. on Thursday, we went out for dinner at a Korean restaurant.  The highlight of the evening emanated from the train crossing next to the restaurant.  Each time we heard a train pass, my son jumped up and went to the window to watch.  He is so infatuated with trains!  We played a game called, "Listen for the Train."  On Thursday evening, we went out to dinner again, this time to a restaurant reputed to have the best bulgogi (Korean barbeque) in Korea.  The grilled bulgogi was delicious, and the restaurant’s ambiance was stellar.  The restaurant is actually a collection of traditional-style buildings facing a long walkway stretching from the front gate to the kitchen.  It is a very large place, obviously very popular because of its size and opulence.  As is customary in many Korean restaurants, customers take off their shoes at the door and sit on floormats and dine at low-lying tables.  Korean traditional tables often feature large, round openings that cradle woks or cooking pots.  At this restaurants, ceramic pots filled with charcoal grilled the bulgogi.  Most Korean bulgogi is grilled over small propane stoves built into the table.  The best tasting bulgogi, however, is grilled over hot coals.  That, and the special way the bulgogi beef was prepared, made the bulgogi a sumptuous alternative to run-of-the-mill bulgogi.  The side dishes, or panchan, at this restaurant were tasty, but nothing to rave about.
 
During my visit to Pusan, I met many Americans who live in Pusan, Daegu, and Ulsan, among other places.  Most serve in the U.S. military, but some work for companies in remote locations along the coast.  It was especially interesting to meet an American working at a civilian nuclear power plant as well as the family of another American working on an oil rig south of Pusan.  The family came by boat from their remote Korean island just to visit me and ask me questions.  I was happy to oblige.
 
We didn’t have much time to enjoy Paradise Hotel in Haeundae.  I worked all day, and when I finished, my family went out and explored the town.  On Saturday, we checked out of the hotel and took a taxi back to Pusan Station.  We stashed our luggage in a locker at the train station and then spent our final hours in Pusan visiting Beomeosa, one of Korea’s oldest and most famous temples.  Over 1,300 years old, the temple was first built during the Shilla Dynasty period.  It has since been rebuilt frequently.  Only four stone pillars at the temple’s entrance remain from the original temple site.  Built on a mountain about 18 kilometers north of downtown, Beomeosa is well worth the long subway ride.  Take the Orange Line from Pusan Station to Beomeosa Station.  It’s about a 40-minute ride and costs just 1,000 won each way (about $1.00).  We made the mistake of taking a taxi to Beomeosa, and we spent far more time and money getting there by taxi than we did returning by subway.  We did not know what to expect at the temple, but we were happily surprised to find that the temple was hosting a conference and Founder’s Day celebration.  We wandered around the temple and enjoyed the colorful, festive lanterns, free tea and cheap vegetarian food, and watched Buddhist faithful converge on the temple to pray, gather, and enjoy a free music concert.  We also saw a small, lively Founder’s Day parade.  It was utterly fascinating!  The temple was abuzz with more activity than I have ever seen at any Buddhist temple.  I was glad that we stumbled unintentionally upon such a festive occasion.
 
Gaecheonjeol Day (개천절), or Founder’s Day, celebrates the birth of mythical first Korean ancestor, Dangun (단군), who founded the Korean nation.  Although the existence of Dangun has not been proven (the North Korean Government claims Dangun’s tomb was unearthed near Pyongyang), Dangun represents the birth of the Korean nation and embodies the traditional spirit of Korea.  Dangun is an indigenous figure not directly associated with Buddhism.  However, modern Korean Buddhism has embraced Dangun as a holy figure, and in Korea, Dangun, ancestor worship, and Shamanism all have intermingled with Korean Buddhism.  Hence, on Founder’s Day a large celebration of the birth of Dangun was held in a Buddhist sanctuary.  We are not Buddhist, but we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the temple.