Korean Hardworking Culture

Lee Myung Bak

Hello guys. I’m back to write again.  Now I’d like to share one of the most significant culture of Korea, its working habit. One major distinction between Korean people and citizens of other country is the Koreans’ hardworking habit. The Koreans work really hard an d quick no matter what they’re doing: businessman, politician, scientist, bricklayer, president, or even vegetable sellers promoting their product on the pedestrian walks.

The great thing about them is that they love their job, without thinking to much about their social status. Therefore, they can focus on what they’re doing, no matter what level of their job is. A billionaire businessman will work as hard as cleaning service working in a school, a famous politician will give his best effort so does the amateur singers. Working in this way, they can really perform very well in their job. A businessman will make a lot money while a cleaning service can maintain the perfect cleanness of the schoo.

One real-life example is a middle-age lady working as cleaning service in Daejeon University’s dormitory where I stay during my exchange program in South Korea. Every morning she cleans up from the first floor until the 7th floor without any complain, and her face shows that she’s really enjoying her job. Whenever we meet, she always smiles at us. She mops all of the floors in our dormitory, 7 of them. And she doesnt only work on her job, but she always makes sure that the floor is clean. The other great thing about her is that after collecting all of the garbage from the trashcans in the building, she will separate the trash into differerent cathegories. I’m not sure how many cathegories she has but, she always separate it. She put the plastic into one group, arrange the papers into a pile of paper, collect all of the organic trash into one group. That’s how I see every cleaning service doing their jobs, showing how they love their job no matter what.

Working Overtime

Another proof of how hard the Koreans working habit is the fact that they mostly work overtime, beyond the office hours. It’s a culture in Korea that they won’t be late to the office, but most of the time they will be late to go- home since they have so much work to do in the office. They dont like postponing work, therefore they prefer stay longer in the office to finish their work. Here the value of professionality is brought perfectly. If we’re assigned some task, we gotta finish it, no matter how our condition is.

The other reason for working overtime is because of its culture of respecting elderly. Seniority is highly praised in Korean culture. People must respect their seniors. That’s is a reason why some staff members will not go out of the office if the seniors haven’t left yet. Unless they have urgent and important thing to do, mostly staff members will go out of the office after the director/senior staff have left.

That’s how the Korean works in their life, and that’s how fast they build up their nantion in few decades. Out of nothing, they can build up one of the best InternetBecause they’ve been working really hard. Their “palli-palli”-culture always put them to work really fast and willing to get the best result.

Let’s get our work done guys..

best regards,

~nasikun