Korea Discovers Workers Aren't Robots, 80 Hours Later
The Korea Times reports a London Bagel Museum employee died, allegedly after working nearly 80-hour weeks, sparking a 'debate' over mandatory work-hour records. The company denies the claim, insisting 80-hour weeks are 'unlikely.' This isn't a new 'debate' in South Korea, which famously grapples with 'overwork death' ( gwarosa ). The country's labor laws, despite a 2018 amendment to cap the
workweek at 52 hours, still allow for 'exceptions' and rampant exploitation, particularly in service industries. It appears their 'advanced IT' hasn't quite stretched to tracking basic human decency. One might wonder why a company would resist a simple digital timestamp, unless those timestamps expose a stark contradiction between public relations and literal human casualty. How many more
'unlikely' deaths before corporate balance sheets reflect actual human hours, rather than just profits? Perhaps if worker welfare were as zealously protected as intellectual property, such 'debates' wouldn't require a body to kick them off.