Professors from across the US and Korea gathered on August 7, 2019, to participate in a workshop “Long Work Hours in South Korea and Beyond” hosted by the Institute for Korean Studies. The goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse set of scholars who study long work hours in South Korea in order to have a comprehensive discussion of this topic. Dr. Youngjoo Cha (Department of Sociology, Indiana University) was the organizer of this workshop.
South Korea is well-known for its long work hours and its culture of “overwork,” and the participants addressed the question as to why the culture of overwork is particularly pronounced in South Korea, and how it affects individuals and families. They covered a wide range of topics, including comparative or cross-national studies, in order to facilitate understanding of this problem in a full range of cultural and institutional contexts.
Research from this workshop will be published in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. Participants included Soohan Kim (Korea University), Young-Mi Kim (Yonsei University), Hyunji Kwon (Seoul National University), Joohee Lee (Ewha Womans University), Jae Kyung Lee (Ewha Womans University), Sue H. Moon (SUNY Farmingdale), Eunsil Oh (Harvard University), Hyunjoon Park (University of Pennsylvania), Hyeyoung Woo (Portland State University), and Soo-Yeon Yoon (Sonoma State University).
Long Work Hours in South Korea and Beyond Workshop participants