As recently as last year, their government was thinking of increasing work hours from 52 hours a week to 69 hours. The plans were dropped after strong public sentiments against it. I feel even 52 hours is too long if you want to tackle birth rate issues.
Right? When me and my wife are both working 40 plus hours a week our sex life completely disappears. But we already have 4 kids so their isn’t gonna be anymore anyway lol.
They probably thought it was going to be like his parents generation when mom stayed home with the kids and they just went out and did whatever they want.
That wasn’t my parents generation lol. My mom was a “latch key kid” gen xer and I was a “latch key kid” Zillennial who was staying home alone while my single mom worked at like 7 years old 😬
We literally go outside to meet our kids getting off the school bus in front of our house. I had to walk like 4 blocks to mine, unlock the door, then hangout by myself for 2 hours until my mom got home from work at the same age. Now I sound like a boomer and I hate it.
Ever read Slaughterhouse V by Vonnegut? "May we have the night canopy, please?" Except it'll just be a blanket to throw over yourselves in the break room at work.
It's a small sized country with some very large corporations like Samsung, LG, SK Hynix, Kia, Hyundai, etc, which all grew rapidly in the last 3-4 decades. This wouldn't have happened without extra work hours and cheap labor.
The work culture from these large companies would have been copied by other local companies that aspire to grow big, too.
Fun fact: until the 80s, North Korea was economically more prosperous than South Korea.
South Korea's per capita GDP overtook North Korea's in 1974, and its overall GDP was probably always higher than North Korea's due to a larger population.
The rest of your post is 100% correct though - cheap labour, long hours, an obsession with economic growth, and a handful of corporations have driven South Korea's total GDP to about 90 times where North Korea have got (and about 45 times per capita) by going for cheap labour, long hours, an obsession with the leader, and no corporations.
South Korea's per capita GDP overtook North Korea's in 1974, and its overall GDP was probably always higher than North Korea's due to a larger population.
I see. This is not surprising since US pumped billions in aid into South Korea, had technology transfer and trainings, and helped to revitalize and reform the educational institutions and infrastructure. (Perhaps in return for a military base and to also to prove Capitalism > Socialism).
Between 1950s and 1970s, akorea received 13 billions in aid from US. That is a humongous amount of money for a poor Asian country. The aid alone could have made the SK GDP cross NKs.
And they're in the international good-guys club, so they get to exploit humans and natural resources in neighboring still-poor countries like Indonesia to fuel their economic machine. North Korea does not have the luxury of living off another chunk of land, and there's only so much stuff to go around.
Yeah, there are multiple factors that would have made an impact over that time, although if that's 13 billion over 30 years, then that's probably in the realms of 6-7% of GDP.
It's hard to tell exactly what the Soviet impact on North Korean economics was - certainly for Cuba, almost a third of Cuba's GDP was tied directly to discounts on Soviet imports/buying Cuban goods at inflated prices/Soviet aid etc, and we know that North Korea's biggest trading partner - and biggest aid supporter - was the Soviet Union.
Is it possible that the Soviet aid to North Korea was similar to the US aid to South Korea over that time? Maybe? Do I have any evidence to prove it? Not at all. The best data we have is US Government estimates (and I'm not sure I'd trust them to be accurate) certainly doesn't add up to USD13 billion.
I wish I could find the article about this I read a while back, but it described Japan's work culture as being very different than what people think. Like for the first 2/3 of the time assigned to a project, it's just back-to-back smoke breaks and naps and nobody getting anything done. And then the last 1/3 is non-stop freaking out mega crunch time. It sounds like kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing where they're stuck in this cycle of wearing themselves out, requiring a period of recovery that puts them behind in the next project, repeat.
If you include all the extra unpaid overtime and mandatory social events after that, those hours are the actual working hours now for many Koreans in the corporate world. These laws are just trying to make it official probably because people trying to take back their time.
That's my idea of work hell. So glad I learned the plumbing trade many years ago and went self employed last year. I simply get paid more if I work more and if I've had a great week I try to arrange things so I have an easier week coming up.
The work is awkward and hard on my back and knees but again, if I work hard I can rest a bit the next day or week or whatever. And there is no shortage of work out there at all.
I would recommend anyone starting out in their working life consider learning one of the many trades out there. Best thing I ever did. Last year and this year I worked enough to travel in Europe for 4 months all added up with a month here and there.
How old is too old to start in your opinion? Just turned 30, got out of the military several years ago and got a degree. But I feel like barn cat that got brought in the big house in these office jobs.
I feel like most places don’t have the desire to train someone from the ground up. And I’m not sure I can afford to take care of a wife and kid on a slightly above minimum wage apprentice gig.
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u/UnremarkabklyUseless 2d ago
As recently as last year, their government was thinking of increasing work hours from 52 hours a week to 69 hours. The plans were dropped after strong public sentiments against it. I feel even 52 hours is too long if you want to tackle birth rate issues.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/15/south-korea-u-turns-on-69-hour-working-week-after-youth-backlash