Can’t seem to be able to post on that blog, so I’ll just trackback.
The frank mention of breaks provided for periods did crack me (and those students who knew this use of the word) up laughing. Having said that, the notion is not, perhaps, without merit.
The day off for periods is a legal requirement. In the companies that do give it – many just ignore the law, either by ignoring the legal vacation scheme or by lumping this day together with the unisex, cumulable, one-day-a-month day off [월차] – some may take it for its intended purpose, but my own experience as an employer is that they take is when they need a day off…
Actually, Korea’s 노동법 Labour Laws are very generous. Here’s the skinny [as of October 2004, when I finally dropped my copy of 노동법 in the skip. Every year between 1998 and 2004 I had my secretary get me a new copy, just to be on the safe side(*). The possibility the law’s changed for the “worse” is infinitely small]:
- one day a month, cumulable, for men and women, from the first month of employment
- one day a month, non cumulable, for women’s *condition*, from the first month of employment
- 10 days of annual paid leave for employees with one year behind their belt – that number can be reduced to 8/9 if attendance has been below a certain threshold; can’t remember how much, since we never had the case. From the second year of attendance onwards, you add one day per year, until you reach 21 days [I think]. After this, the company can decide to award you extra pay instead of increasing the number of days.
Example: an employee with 3 years in the company gets 12 days of yearly paid leave, 12 days of monthly leave, and if she’s a she, one day per month for periods pains. That’s 24/36 days off. An employee with 20 years in the company gets [at least] 21 +12 [+12 for a woman], ie 33/45. Not bad eh? Theoretically at least, because I haven’t met a single person employed in a Korean company who enjoyed these benefits. Sometimes I had to explain the law to people [they were surprised that the law is this generous], and they’d say “우리 회사엔 그런 게 없어요…”; There’s no such thing in our company. Like companies make their own laws. Or something…
OTOH, Koreans who worked for foreign companies? Sure! Especially – but not limited to – those that have a union. Any breach of the law can get reported, sued, etc… A little double-faced, but nothing new here…
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(*) The reason I kept up to snuff, more or less, on Korean Labour Laws is that I wanted to be able to give my employees everything they deserved, by law, but to be able also to say “there’s no such thing in the law” when they came to me with vague profiteering schemes, arguing “it’s like this in Korea”. Stangely enough, many of the employees I had would have preferred more cash and fewer days off. But there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell it’d happen, especially with my last employer, a very Dutch company…
– I would never had watched this show, ㅋㅋㅋ], and the only one I could tell the story without writing it down – like now – was Oranckay…
