A breadwinner in South Korea, Chae Soo-hong was killed by overworking. He works at a food supplier specializing in jangjorim, a popular Korean side dish, and his primary duty was to make sure production was up to standard an on time. However, even after coming home from work at 10pm ( and he left home at 7am ), his job doesn't done, though it wasn't his explicit duty. As the company took more time, he was expected to take on more and more work himself as he spent most of his time sleeping at home.
Chad died on the floor of his office, and in the morning as he prepared to go there, he had complained of feeling tired just like every weekend before.
He was one of hundreds of people who died in 2017 because of overwork. South Korea is one of the countries whose people work more hours per week on average than others, and they work almost 50% more than Germany.
In July 1 this year the government legislated to reduce the maximum working hours from 68 per week to 40, with 12 hours of paid overtime, but proper enforcement will not begin until January 2019 and will initially be limited to companies with more than 300 employees.
As Japan is the only country to mandate by law that the government study and attempt to remedy the problem, I'm curious how overwork problems will be solved.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/04/asia/korea-working-hours-intl/index.html
Kaho Sugimoto
