[Editorial] Summer holidays

Cheong Wa Dae announced this week President Park Geun-hye would take her summer vacation from July 29 to Aug. 2 at an undisclosed place away from the presidential mansion.

Her vacation is typical of summer holidays spent by other Korean workers. A recent survey by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism showed that 51 percent of government and company employees planned to go on leave during the last week of July. Koreans have long been stereotyped as tying themselves to their workplace and paying little attention to how to make the most of their holidays. They worked 2,193 hours a year in 2011, one of the highest rates in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, where the average was 1,776 hours.

In recent years, however, there have been changes in their perception on the value of vacation, with more attention being paid to work-life balance. More employers have come to the realization that guaranteeing employees a good rest will help increase their creativity and productivity. Workers have been given a longer period of vacation. In some cases, they have been banned from accessing a company computer network while on leave.

Despite some desirable changes, Korean society still appears to have a long way to go before a mature culture of vacation takes root.

While encouraged to go on leave freely, many employees here remain reluctant to take their vacation right fully because they fear losing favor with their boss. A study conducted last year showed that nearly 60 percent of Korean workers studied their superior’s face before setting up their holiday plan, with the corresponding ratios going below 30 percent for employees in Britain, Canada and the U.S. As a result, they usually end up using less than half of their annual paid holidays. A Korean worker was entitled to have 15.3 paid holidays on average last year, compared to 30 days in France and 24 days in Britain and Germany, according to data from a local research institute.

In a phenomenon reflecting the education fever in the country, many Korean parents are also pushed into scheduling their family vacation in time for the short period when private educational institutes teaching their children are closed in the middle of summer. Some Koreans seem to be hampered from taking a leisurely holiday due to their own compulsion of spending their vacation in a conspicuous way not to be left behind others.

This restrictive culture may be one of the reasons Korea ranked fourth from the bottom in work-life balance as a topic of the OECD’s latest Better Life Index survey of its 34 member states plus Russia and Brazil.

Efforts should continue to be made to ensure companies and public institutions guarantee their employees full rights to use holidays. Korea has already passed the phase where lengthening working hours led to accelerating growth.

It is necessary to have the notion that it might help overcome challenges facing Korean society to share work and increase consumption by lessening working hours and taking more holidays. Individual Korean workers also need to think more about how to turn their summer vacation into a period of having a true rest that will recharge their mind, body and spirit.