When you think that South Koreans are just fancy annyeong-haseyo, kamsahamnida, saranghae, and flawless unnies and opppas, you’re totally wrong about that. I’ve worked for a two tech giant korean company before, and the way I see them changes since that day.
Their work ethics, specially, are way way more different than ours. You might think that it’s something you seen on those k-dramas that you’ve watched, but it’s actually not. Too far from it. So here are some of the Korean Working Culture that really shocked me.
Title: Shocking Korean Working
Culture
Published Date: July 25, 2022
Author: alykavinsky They valued their job more than their family.
I remembered my grandpa at work who’s our Korean Vice President of the company who’s very close to me that always says; “If we don’t work so hard, our family wouldn’t eat, we can’t send our children to schools, we can’t sustain our living, we can’t even buy some good clothes, or eat some good food, and live a good life, that’s why we always chose to stay at work even in holidays so we won’t lose it. So we valued our job like as if it’s more important than the family that we have.” That is why if ever you will apply on a korean company, always expect overtime. And when I say overtime, it’s not just 1-3 hours of overtime, during our monthly audit, we almost worked 48 hours, with very few breaks for naps, and sometimes worse than that every time our year end audit came. Plus, we don’t have holidays. We work even in Christmas, New Year, Holy Week, and even on Labor Day. You can chose not to work though, but expect to be scolded by your korean boss the next day you come for your work.
Quantity over quality.
So our company is like a Samsung subsidiary, and we’re the one that makes every single cameras and lenses for their phone, and tablets. Every day, we make millions of them, and our shipment happens to be a daily basis, sometimes twice a day, specially when there are plenty of orders for a certain phone model. So our production has 2 shifts, both with 4-5 hours overtime per shift, our production never stops just so we can target our daily shipment. And what our korean superiors did, so that we can hit our daily target is that, they mostly instructing every supervisors to skip some process, in order for our production to get going as fast as they could. Result of that? Multiple customer complaints and return of materials. And we loses some of our other customers too because of that kind of mindset they have. But sometimes, that doesn’t matter for some of our customers too, because they valued quantity over quality as well. Really fucked up, right?
They are not really “kuripot”.
So when I graduated from college, some of my classmates who already are working, told us not to apply on any korean company, because they said that, they really are very close-fisted (kuripot) to their employees. But when I experienced it myself, I can’t say now that it isn’t really true. In the recent company that I’ve been in, we have plenty of incentives. We have load allowance, position allowance, meal allowance, health card, plus our overtime rate is bigger compared to the other company on our economic zone. And when they see how hardworking you are, they give you money from their own pocket, and they always treat their team somewhere to eat, or just to have fun. I remember Appa, my Korean Manager used to give me extra money every time he sees me getting so tired at work. Haha he treat me like his own child as well.
Dirty politics at work.
Just when you thought that only Filipinos have that crab mentality, you’re totally wrong. Koreans is far worse than that. They will do everything just to keep their self on top, whatever the consequences are. I can still remember how some of those koreans that I’ve worked with, plotted something just to remove our Vice President to his position, and that got even worse, because he got fired later on. I can still clearly remembered how I cried my effing ass off so hard when our VP send his goodbye message to me. Breaks me to my core.
Bad communication at work.
They don’t get to communicate with other koreans when something comes up of our production plan, or when some troubles happens. They usually shoulder things all alone, until they can’t solve and carry the problem anymore. Happens many times at work. Whenever we get to have a new model, and we need to instruct the production to make some samples, different samples has to came out sometimes just because they received different instructions from another korean superiors. So the key is to always saves a proof, so that no one can blame you in the end.
Generosity towards your hardwork.
As I’ve said earlier, they are not really close-fisted (kuripot). I have this korean partner at work, which was based on our headquarters in South Korea, and he always used to bought me different gifts, and plenty of “pasalubong” whenever he visited our satelite company here in the Philippines. Most times he bought me plenty of chocolates, and sometimes, clothes or bags. Our Vice President and my first Korean Manager always did the same thing for me, as well as Appa, my current korean manager at that time. And I couldn’t be more grateful to them because they always treated me special and very dear to their hearts. That’s how they show appreciation for your hardwork and honesty. They give you back something you really deserves, and sometimes, more.
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That’s it folks! I hope you learned something from here, so it can gives you some heads up whenever you’re trying to apply for a Korean company, or work somewhere in Korea. For sure though, that there are still more work ethics of them I didn’t know, but what I listed here are only based on my personal experience.
I’ll be off for now. ‘Til my next blog. Adiós!
