“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

— Ben Franklin

THE UNEXPECTED KOREAN WORKING EFFORT

It is visible that Korea is an entertaining and modern country but who would acknowledge of Korea as a country with full of hard-working people. After years being an enthusiast in Korean culture, I recognize that they are just identical to beautiful swans on a lake, although they may seem to be swimming calmingly and perfectly on the water but their legs are in fact, paddling hard under the water. Korea, contrary to their dazzling outlook, their people work their souls out to achieve such outstanding results that impress people around the world. The reality is severe. Students who are about to attend exams that lead them to universities basically just use all the time they have to study. In addition, according to a 2008 ranking by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Korean employees work the longest hours per year, on average, out of every other OECD member. We can see that the laborious characteristic is spreaded and maintained from the former generations to the young ones.

“Without hard work and discipline it is difficult to be a top professional.”
— Jahangir Khan

RELATING TO OTHER CONCEPTS

The reason of the Korean effort is because it shows their sacrifice to the community that they committed in. Korea, one of the Collective Asian countries, they tend to sacrifice themselves for the good of the organization and their country. Personal achievements are not important and they should be sacrificed to serve the group goals. This became their culture is because it has inculcated in Korean people’s head for years and they behave this way at such a young age. Hu’s article (2015) quoted Kim, “We don't have enough natural resources; the only resources we have are human resources. So actually everybody equipped with higher education would be best for our country but not good for their own selves. So we have really a big dilemma.” For a student, their effort spent on studying is also consider a sacrifice to their family. If a family has a well-educated kid who can get into famous university and have a bright future career path, the family is labelled as a good family. However, the kids are sacrificing, they are willing to make good results to prove the name of their family too. In a worker perspective, sacrifice is expected in the workplace. Even if they have to work 80 hours per week, that is just sacrifice and commitment to the organization, and they think of that as their missions. Other concept that we have to consider is the Power Distance in Korea. This country also adopts the high power distance culture like other Asian countries. The employees have to be considerate of their manager emotions and work collaboratively with them. If a manager works over time in the office, following the unspoken rules, the staff have to stay with him and work until he leaves. The employees can gain more points on their contribution and probably more likely to be promoted. Although those statements above may seem unbearable to us, it is normal in the Korean context. According to Olson (2008), a Korean employee, Lee said “It is the culture, we always watch what the senior boss thinks of our behavior. So it’ is very difficult to finish at a fixed time.”

“Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”

— Dwayne Johnson

PERSONAL UNDERSTANDINGS

Being a hard-working person obviously is hard to achieve yet this is a respectable characteristic of Korean to adopt. We expect things we do to be completed in the most magnificent way, therefore, we usually set out the procedure and goals to fully accomplish the main target. Hard-working people are the ones whose path to success is closer compared to others. They are determined, mainly concentrate on what they are doing. The higher the concentration, the higher the effectiveness. However, in my opinion, it is also important to consider more of our own self and family. Above all, health is the most crucial thing because it assists us in everything we do. We probably cannot measure the positive energy that good health brings to us. Health gives us both physical energy and mental energy. Although working hard is a good thing but we cannot because of that that we leave behind all the joy in life. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” I bet you all heard of this saying. People should develop the soft skills and be social as well. There are many more interesting things waiting for us to experience than just workload and assignments. More time should be spent on developing own values and relationships because those are what go along with us for our whole life. Our life would be so boring if we just work and earn money all the time. Later on in life when we look back, no one wants to blame yourself for being way too hard-working that we accidentally turn our life into a misery full of boring chains of actions: work, eat, sleep, and repeat.