The presidential transition team will consider shortening working hours by stretching the weekly limit across all seven days of the week, not five, an official said Friday.
Working hours in South Korea are notoriously long, despite a legal limit of eight hours per day and 40 hours per week. A government report published last September showed that the country's average weekly working hours ranked the highest among the member states of the rich nations' club -- the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- at 44.6 hours per week.
"We plan to review ways to include weekends and holidays in calculating overtime work in order to change the practice of working long hours," a transition committee official said, asking that he not be identified.
President-elect Park Geun-hye has made it one of her top 10 campaign pledges to improve the quality of life for workers.
Under current laws, an employer can get away with making employees work up to 68 hours a week, including eight hours per day on the weekend and 12 hours in overtime work. (Yonhap News)
