Amidst the issue of overwork of courier workers as a social issue, on the afternoon of October 21 last year, representatives of civil society organizations from various fields at Gwanghwamun Square in Jongno-gu, Seoul are announcing a joint declaration containing measures to reduce working hours. Senior Reporter Lee Jong-geun [email protected]
“I can never fall down. Let’s get stronger, let’s just look ahead and run~.” Recently, it was introduced on a radio program saying that it is the song that office workers are most upset with. They say that you should always be strong, whether at work or at school. Emphasizes a healthy and strong body and a strong spirit. No place says it’s okay to be weak. Koreans who were’born on the historical mission of revitalization of the people’ had to always be strong. Also, there is an image of a strong Korean and an indomitable Korean in the world. However, unlike this, health indicators are odd. Koreans have high objective indicators of health, but subjective indicators are last. Looking at the life expectancy (the number of years the child is expected to live in the future), which is an objective indicator of health, in the case of Korea, it is 82.7 years, which is 2 years longer than the average of 80.7 years of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, the results of subjective health evaluation are quite different. When looking at the percentage who answered’yes’ to the question’Do you think your health is in good condition’, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada are 80-90%, and the OECD average is 67.9%. By comparison, Koreans stay at 32%, and only Korea and Japan out of the 35 countries surveyed. (OECD Health Statistics 2020) Opinions are divided on how to interpret this statistic, and in some cases, the health inflammatory disease in our society is unusual. There is also a glance to say that it is sneaky. However, in my view, it is not that health anxiety is a problem, but that the Korean society has too high standards for health. When we say’healthy’, what is the standard? The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a state of complete spiritual well-being, not simply disease-free. However, although these health regulations may be oriented, the standards are so high that they have no discrimination power and are less realistic. Normally, the socially agreed standard of’healthy’ would be a state where there is no difficulty in social or daily life.
A society with’overworked death’, a society without’overworked death’
What does it mean for Koreans to work at work in a’incompetent state’? To endure the world’s leading working hours, intensity of labor, fierce competition, and anxiety about not knowing when to get cut, there is no way to have enough physical strength. As you know, Korea has long working hours. They work 26 days more a year than Germany and 12 more days than Japan. (OECD Labor Force Statistics 2020) Because overwork is a daily reality, the news of’overworked death’ is not noticed. There are overflowing people who are struggling with overwork and burnout. Even today, young people often say that they are’threshing up to the soul’ and leaving work. For Koreans, commuting to work is a narrow crossing between overwork and death. Is there another reality that accurately reflects the proposition that language reflects social and culture? It is said that the concept of’overworked death’ is only in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (As we have seen, the countries with the lowest subjective health indicators are also Korea and Japan. Taiwan and Hong Kong are not members of the OCD, so they are not in the statistics). In addition, it’s so common that it’s not covered much in the news, but there is no unique noun in the English dictionary, and Japanese (Karoshi) is registered. Of course, the English-speaking world will not have overwork, but it will be recognized as a special phenomenon such as Chaebol and Hwa-byung. How many office workers go to work in the morning with a refreshing body? If you’re working with a bloodless face, your boss asks you how many days you’ve been working overtime. It is natural to be tired after working overtime for a few days, but blame for being less healthy. ‘Latte’ worked 6 days a week, and he says that there are a lot of overtime days until Sunday. In the company training, the instructor says,’Pro is not sick.’ The self-help book for office workers is said to be talented in the 21st century who manages health as well, and who can do business anyway even if he is sick. When we say that’development’ is to awaken the potential, it seems to mean to mine and use all of the potential physical strength. As a result of such work, Korean society developed the term “overworked death”. A co-worker brings you a drink containing the extract of dulcis dulcis and says the fatigue is due to the liver. I want to correct that fatigue is not because of the liver, but because of overwork, but I also want to save the energy. Rather than reducing overtime, the company recommends that you become healthier so that you can be comfortable with overtime. Anyway, since you have to live with it, it’s the moment when you have to wake up and start working again even as a relieving agent. In a society where health is also a specification, the whip to become an outstanding person is giving birth to a person called overwork. When it is said that being healthy is’the condition of working life is not unreasonable’, in a society with long working hours and high intensity, like in Korea, the standards of health that an individual must have as a’normal worker’ are bound to rise. When the health standards for individual workers are raised, companies can avoid the responsibility to improve the working environment. In order to make a body that can go to work even after working overtime for a few days, she blames her sick body and pours green juice and nutrients. Not only do companies not invest in hiring more workers to improve the working environment, but workers, not companies, make’investment’ for workers’ health. I imagine sometimes. What if I had a sick body in another society that couldn’t even enter Korea’s standard labor market five days a week? I am a body capable of working 6 hours a day, 3 days a week, and in the Korean workplace culture, I am a very inferior body that is very unhealthy. But what if a society like Sweden is experimenting with labor for 6 hours a day? A society where there is no word of overwork, but rather wonders why people die while working at work. In a society where the standards of health that individual workers must have are low, my body may be evaluated as’a little unhealthy, somewhat inferior body’ for working life. We need to take a closer look at who is emphasizing the steel body that endures repeated overtime work and who is benefiting from such an emphasis on health. The medical industry also seems to be raising standards for health. Japanese medical experts such as Makoto Kondo argue that medical capital is selling more drugs by excessively raising the standard of normal numbers. The standard of medicalized’normal body’ is increasingly subdivided and higher. When I see a lot of health supplement ads, I feel like I’m sick of not taking vitamins or magnesium. In fact, not only capital, but power in the first place. What might have been the reason why Japan built a hospital in Joseon during the Japanese colonial rule, and missionaries from the West organized and emphasized the’body of standard’ while holding a selection contest for excellent children? The low subjective health indicators of Koreans are not due to health anxiety, but because of the unusually soaring cultural standards of health, such as the oddly soaring house prices. In addition, the high life expectancy of Koreans in the first place is difficult to see as a result of the government’s efforts for public health by monitoring safe working conditions or strengthening public health care. The social structure that causes everything to be lost when health is lost allows individuals to manage their health militantly. This is the result for the survival of each mortal society. Citizens are threshing their souls and pouring their money into health care. Therefore, the so-called health anxiety disorder, which is unusual in Korean society, is not a cause but a result.
It is mature to say that you are sick
Many Koreans say they are afraid to live long. How long they have to be overworked in poverty or fear of poverty, but they also sigh. Looking around, everyone is living with a breath of breath in their throat. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say that it is painful and difficult. As mentioned earlier, even though high standards of health are a problem and it is painful because of working too much, it is because rather than taking the cause of harming health as a problem, the resulting sick body is a problem. In a society that sets high health standards and excessively strong bodies as standard bodies, messages such as shame, laziness, and self-management failure are constantly delivered to those who do not. The last verse of singer Maya’s song, mentioned at the beginning of the article, is like this. “Instead of saying that you should never be weak, instead of saying that you should not be left behind, you can shout that you are on my way.” Whose voice was it in the first place to say that we should become weak and not lag behind, and that we should become iron arms and iron legs, each one should survive, ignoring his body? What does it take to take one step closer to a society where it is okay to get sick and a society where people can get sick well? It is to dismantle excessively high health standards and change the social message that we must be strong. In Korean society, pretending to be sick but not sick, and pretending to be hard but not difficult is a culture that is regarded as a virtue. However, in a society where capital raises the standard of health as it is now, it may not be maturity, but rather responding to the logic of capital. To say that it is rather painful and difficult in this era seems to be a’political correct’ mature attitude. This is because when the pain is actively exposed, it opens up the possibility that the standard of health will be properly readjusted.
▶ Post-colonial feminists who work across movements related to women, peace and disability. He wrote a political and social approach to the experience of fighting disease after health damage in international field solidarity activities. He directed RTV (RTV) current affairs documentary and several documentaries. There is a co-author. It deals with the social, economic, and political issues surrounding a sore body. It is loaded every other week.