The Always-On Workforce
Two out of every three employees in South Korea have received work related calls or messages outside office hours during the past year, according to a survey released in February 2025. The study, conducted by Global Research among 1,000 South Koreans aged 19 and older, found that 66 percent of respondents had been contacted by superiors after work or during weekends and holidays at least once. This statistic underscores a growing crisis in a nation where the boundary between professional and personal life has become increasingly blurred, leaving workers tethered to their devices and struggling to disconnect.
The survey results reveal a pattern of intrusion that extends deep into personal time. Approximately 31 percent of those contacted received messages after 10 p.m., while more than 45 percent reported that the contact concerned matters they did not consider urgent. Despite the non essential nature of many requests, compliance remains high. When contacted, 30.5 percent of workers handled the request immediately through remote means, while 60.6 percent addressed the matter the following workday. Only 8.9 percent said they did not respond at all.
Attorney Jung So-yeon of Workplace Gapjil 119, a workers rights organization, highlighted the human cost of this constant connectivity.
Cases of workers complaining of fatigue due to constant connectivity are increasing. Legislative protection is urgently needed.
Frequency and Patterns of Intrusion
The Global Research survey, conducted between October 1 and October 14, 2025, broke down the frequency of after hours contact in detail. The largest share of respondents, at 21.2 percent, reported being contacted one to three times per month. This was followed by those contacted one or two times per week (20.6 percent), one to 10 times per year (18.6 percent), and more than three times per week (5.6 percent). While some might dismiss occasional messages as harmless, the cumulative effect creates what researchers call technostress, a condition first identified in the 1980s that describes the inability to adapt to rapidly developing digital technologies.
Historical data suggests the problem has intensified over the past decade. According to a 2015 study by the Korea Institute of Labor Research, 70.3 percent of workers already used smart devices to perform work related tasks after hours or on holidays. By 2021, a survey by the Gyeonggi Research Institute found that 87.8 percent of 500 wage earners received work instructions after hours, most frequently through private messaging applications such as KakaoTalk. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend by normalizing remote work arrangements, embedding constant connectivity deeper into workplace culture.
Documented Health Consequences
The psychological burden of perpetual availability is translating into measurable physical symptoms. A study published in the Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine analyzed data from the 6th Korean Working Conditions Survey and found a significant association between after hours telecommunication device use and work related headaches and eyestrain. Researchers examined 8,644 full time, non shift white collar workers and discovered that even rare after hours contact increased the odds of experiencing these symptoms by 29.2 percent compared to those never contacted.
The correlation strengthened with frequency. Workers contacted several times per month showed a 55.1 percent higher odds ratio for headaches and eyestrain, while those contacted daily faced a 54.8 percent increase. Surprisingly, the study found that those contacted several times per month actually showed slightly higher risk than those contacted weekly or daily, possibly due to the unpredictability and stress of intermittent contact disrupting recovery periods.
Workers who use telecommunication devices for work after regular hours are more susceptible to experiencing work related headaches and eyestrain compared to those who do not.
The research attributes these symptoms to work related rumination, where employees continue thinking about work issues during personal time, leading to increased cortisol secretion and poor sleep quality. Workers with sleep disorders were three times more likely to experience work related headaches and eyestrain than those without sleep disorders, creating a cycle of deteriorating health that affects both wellbeing and productivity.
Legislative Gridlock and the Right to Disconnect
Despite overwhelming public support for intervention, legislative efforts to protect workers have repeatedly failed. More than 80 percent of respondents in the Global Research survey supported the creation of legal measures to restrict after hours work related contact. Multiple revisions to the Labor Standards Act aimed at guaranteeing the right to disconnect have been proposed since 2016, but were all automatically scrapped during the 20th and 21st sessions of the National Assembly due to term expiration.
The right to disconnect concept was first proposed in 2015 by Bruno Mettling and subsequently incorporated into French labor law in 2017. Countries such as Slovakia, Italy, and the Philippines have since enacted similar protections. South Korea remains notably absent from this list, leaving workers without legal recourse when employers demand attention during rest periods.
Currently, two related bills are pending at the 22nd National Assembly, introduced by Representative Park Hong-bae of the Democratic Party of Korea and Representative Kim Wi-sang of the People Power Party. These proposals represent the latest attempt to establish boundaries around personal time, though their fate remains uncertain given the legislative pattern of the past decade.
Cultural Foundations of Overwork
South Korea’s struggle with after hours contact reflects deeper structural issues within its labor market and social norms. A Stanford University survey of 16,000 college graduates worldwide found that South Koreans work from home an average of just 0.5 days per week, the lowest among 40 major countries studied. Canada topped the list with 1.9 days, while even regional neighbors like Japan (0.7 days) and China (0.6 days) showed slightly more flexibility.
Researchers attribute this rigidity to collectivist workplace norms, hierarchical corporate structures, and an emphasis on in person supervision. Over 80 percent of full time employees in South Korea say their schedules are fully dictated by their employers, nearly 20 percentage points above the European average. This lack of autonomy extends beyond remote work to include the inability to set personal start and end times or work reduced hours.
The cultural pressure to remain constantly productive manifests in phenomena like Cagongjok, a term describing young South Koreans who study or work in cafes for extended periods. Starbucks Korea recently implemented guidelines to curb extreme cases where customers brought desktop monitors, printers, and six port power strips to establish all day workstations. While this reflects individual drive, it also signals a society where public and private spaces for rest have shrunk, forcing productivity into every available corner.
Economic Paradoxes and the AI Factor
The situation presents contradictory economic indicators. While the 52 hour workweek system, implemented progressively since 2018 for larger companies, has reduced average daily working hours from 6 hours and 23 minutes in 2019 to 6 hours and 8 minutes in 2024, sleep duration has simultaneously declined for the first time since record keeping began in 1999. Koreans now sleep an average of 8 hours and 4 minutes daily, down from 8 hours and 12 minutes in 2019.
Artificial intelligence adoption adds another layer of complexity. According to a Bank of Korea survey conducted in mid 2025, 51.8 percent of Korean workers use generative AI at work, a rate nearly double that of the United States. Korean workers spend five to seven hours weekly using AI, compared to 0.5 to 2 hours for American workers. While AI has reduced working hours by an estimated 3.8 percent, it has also introduced new forms of after hours labor. A survey of call center workers found that 63.1 percent experienced increased customer complaints related to AI systems, leading to extended processing time after shifts conclude. One worker reported spending an extra hour after shifts just on processing work following calls.
Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index identifies this phenomenon as the infinite workday, where the workday stretches well into the evening with meetings after 8 p.m. increasing 16 percent year over year globally. The report notes that by 10 p.m., nearly 29 percent of active workers dive back into their inboxes, pointing to a steady rise in after hours activity that transcends national borders but particularly affects high intensity work cultures.
Demographic and Social Implications
The inability to disconnect carries consequences beyond individual health, affecting national demographics and family structures. South Korea’s birthrate hit a record low of 0.72 in 2023, and researchers argue that the lack of flexibility for working parents is a key barrier to family formation. A study by Dr Jung Sung-mi of the Korean Women Development Institute found that only 21.9 percent of women and 17.9 percent of men with children under six enjoy flexible work arrangements, compared to over 60 percent of women and nearly 58 percent of men in the European Union.
Dr Jung’s research suggests that the freedom to control one’s schedule had a stronger impact on family planning decisions than traditional incentives like cash subsidies or child benefits. In a society where time has become a luxury for working families, policies that return control over time to employees may do more to raise birthrates than any financial subsidy ever could, she noted.
Organizations that introduced flexible systems in 2021 saw an average 3.6 percent increase in employment, with small organizations seeing gains as high as 6.3 percent. These numbers suggest that flexibility benefits economic outcomes as well as social wellbeing, challenging the assumption that constant availability drives productivity.
Key Points
- Two thirds of South Korean workers received work related contact outside office hours during the past year, with 31 percent contacted after 10 p.m.
- Over 80 percent of workers support legal measures to restrict after hours work contact, though bills pending since 2016 have repeatedly failed.
- Medical studies link after hours device use to increased odds of headaches and eyestrain, with affected workers showing up to 55 percent higher risk than those never contacted.
- South Korea ranks lowest globally for remote work flexibility, averaging 0.5 days per week compared to 1.9 days in Canada.
- Despite AI adoption reducing work hours by 3.8 percent, after hours contact continues to rise, contributing to declining sleep duration and record low birthrates.
