Asking because Reuter’s has a biased reporting for anything related to India, and I’m wondering if they have a similar lens / filter for South Korea. (I’m from India in US)
What I find interesting, though, is that I don't think it is necessarily editing bias. I think it's actually the opposite: poor editing. What I've found is that when I've found stories that are mistranslated, or which contain seemingly intentionally misleading information, it's actually the same reporters. It is really only a handful of reporters that seem to be responsible for all of the crap news stories. The problem is that the editors seem to let the stories through (possibly because they are money makers???).
I'm not going to name names (of reporters) because my "analysis" is really adhoc and probably also biased. However, I encourage people to look at the by-lines and see if you find any patterns with types of stories and their authors. Don't assume that because it's reported by a reputable news service that the information is correct and unbiased.
I've called some of the offending journalists out on social media, which I encourage everyone to do.
* sep, 2018 https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/prison-providing-... * feb, 2018 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/south-korea-overwork-culture-j... * 2014 https://www.wsj.com/video/want-a-break-from-stress-send-your...
Of course most people haven't heard of it. It is basically a gimmicky take on a silent retreat and there is only 1. I'm sure there are all sorts of odd takes on silent retreats in the US too.
I have seen a question on HN about Japanese "Black Companies" before, and I believe patio11 said that they were an actual thing. So I'm not surprised a similar culture of overwork exists in South Korea.
(My only direct experience of South Koreans is that they always kick my ass at online games).
Of course not everyone want this, and it is Buddhism - half of Koreans are christian.
For that matter, the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was not Catholic, wrote about going to stay for a short period at the Benedictine abbey of St. Wandrille, mostly to get away from distractions. You can find the account in https://www.nyrb.com/products/a-time-to-keep-silence.
Marketing it as a prison puts a quirky twist on it. This makes for an interesting article, which also fits Western stereotypes.
This is just an unusual hotel that helps people get away from everyday life and stop being tied to their smartphones for a while. You could remove all references to South Korea, and the business model still looks interesting. I suspect it could work just as well in Japan, or even in the West as a modern alternative to a monastery.
[1]: https://www.theminimalists.com/
I believe many people in this forum fall under the: got plenty of money, spending plenty of money, started medidating to improve life and work performance, found value in decluttering.
I don't know how wide-spread this phenomenon is in Korea, or the integrity of the journalist/article, but even if 200 people do it in a year, it looks like they are trying to simplify their life.
Edit: thinking about this a bit better, this is more like Ascetisism [2] (fromt the Greek Ασκητισμός), than Minimalism, but it is to the same direction.
There are blocks of "prison" like apartments with surrounding quiet zones in many areas. They exist simply so people can escape home life and study 24/7 (mostly rote memorization exercises) in order to pass some gatekeeping exam [1]. I have a niece who didn't score well enough in the college entrance exam to get into a tier-1 school and so is spending a year in one of these in order to retake the test and get into a better school. It's not a prison exactly, you can come and go as you please, but people generally don't rent these as their sole residential living arrangements. The goal is to have a distraction free environment to get as much wakeful study in as possible. The last time I visited the country, she was so deep into her studies she was unable to break free and come say hi and was very regretful about it over the phone.
Work life is also pretty crazy, and often unproductively so. Many companies simply just waste employee time making them sit around or do busy work in order to appear that they're actively engaged in business activities. There's also enforced after hour drinking and dinner activities and often work on weekends. It's not as bad as Japan, but there's definitely strong commonalities. It's considered very desirable to get a job with a foreign company because their treatment of staff is more along global norms. There was a cut this past year in the maximum full-time hours, but it's still way above 40/week and is probably poorly enforced. I can almost guarantee it will have no measurable impact in work output even though companies are acting like its economic armageddon.
Some of my relatives work like this and it's pretty much a universal desire among them and my friends there to start their own small company so the hours will be better and maybe even the pay. It doesn't even matter if the company is something they have any particular expertise in...just something to enable them to have some better measure of control.
Here's an anecdote, one of my Korean relatives has wanted to come visit us in the U.S. for 3 years, he only gets 5 days of vacation per year. At the beginning of the year he asks for permission from his boss if he can take those 5 days and come over. For 2 years he was denied and as a result just took his vacation days as three day weekends (with at least a one month notice beforehand). His boss acted like he was trying to destroy the company both years.
This year he was given permission to come visit, but his wife was not and so he's coming alone.
He works a very normal white collar job.
1 - https://kotaku.com/these-korean-rooms-are-compared-to-prison...
Source: not Korean, but married into one for 18 years
Incredibly true. When I worked there, I had to literally sit at my desk until 8pm despite being done with work by 6 simply because 8pm for my office was the “end of working hours.” Then off to a Soju-fueled dinner with coworkers whether you wanted to or not which would often degrade to a session of mandatory fun at the Karaoke. Rinse and repeat. I love Korea, but the work culture can be brutal. Hopefully that has changed a bit.
What kind of company is this? I work in Korea and talking with other Koreans here there is a mandatory minimum by law. Asking for a day off is normal, but 5 days? That's extreme.
If your biases and Reuters’ biases match, then you won’t notice anything biased or wrong in Content published by them. I think it’s up to you to figure out and identify which of the (many) biases are obvious in Reuter’s content of Asian and south East Asian countries (not just India)
멍 때린다. Im zoning out. Translitterally, to be in a state of stupor.
"Biased != incorrect. If your biases and Reuters’ biases match, then you won’t notice anything biased or wrong in Content published by them. I think it’s up to you to figure out and identify which of the (many) biases are obvious in Reuter’s content of Asian and south East Asian countries (not just India)."
If you are aware of your own cognitive biases, only then can one start noticing what kind of reporting is biased and what is not.
FWIW, I believe biased reporting helps receive more clicks, and I'm not necessarily against it.
My question was purely out of interest to know if people from/in Korea agree with the picture painted by Reuters or not. Looking at the popularity of the question, my guess is probably not.
Reason for my question, in addition to my belief that they are biased (not incorrect), is that a similar behavior in the US would mean (my guess, I'm not a doc) a diagnosis of depression.
While I find the idea of a prison a bit silly, the 10 day courses come with a heavy load of tradition, more or less mandatory 1hour talk everyday, and at least 2-" h of mandatory (in the hall together) meditation practice.
I am grateful for what I felt on those 10 days. But in a sense, I got more than I asked for. So those 10 days are a little bit sneaky in a sense. There is a lot going on those retreats, a lot of energy work. But once you're out of the retreat you're on your own.
While the 10 days have their benefits, I think there is a place for a distraction free environment that lets people think about their life without putting them on the "awakening" bus.
As an aside, I get the idea of the prison. The idea is to be submissive, to lose control. It's a very common theme in sexual fantasies as well, for a reason...
But, at the very least if they're going for the prison theme it should be cheaper than 90 USD a day. :/
An example near Chiang Mai in north west Thailand https://www.fivethousandyears.org/
I've done two 10-day courses from them. After my first one I described it to people as like being in prison, never having gone to prison, but with less freedom than prison. But I still went back for a second time :)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-16/japan-s-p...
Sure. If you don't mind very bad food. If you don't mind always being a little too cold. If you don't mind never having a moment to yourself. If you don't mind not being able to use the bathroom in private. If you don't mind never showering alone. If you don't never being alone. If you don't mind not seeing much sun.
Most US prisoners aren't in anything nice like that. Most state run prisons are dangerous shitholes. Maximum security Federal facilities are clean and safe, but rough in that you're by yourself in a tiny room 23 hours a day.
/a cousin of mine who has a fancy PhD from Stanford left his $$$ job in AI research back in the mid-00s to go and live in a couple of ashrams and monasteries in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Still lives there, haven't spoken to him in a decade.
If you hole up in a Motel 6, then every minute you're there; you're choosing to not go to work, get a job, socialise, look after your kids, etc.
I can say from personal experience that it was not bliss in any way for me.
Something related regarding flight. I LOVE my yearly 14 hour flight because it means I have 14 hours of absolutely no obligations, be it work or simply answering a text.
Just because she did it doesn't mean it was pleasant.
From the age of 7 or 8, they are doing full days at school and at least 1 after school hagwon (private academy). That ramps up as they get older. By 10 or 11, they are doing full 9am-9pm days. Middle and high school kids are more like 9am-9pm in class and I've had kids tell me that they go home and study until 2 or 3am, regularly. I routinely had kids breakdown and cry.
After a while I realized that in a small way I was helping contribute to the continuation of this lifestyle and I soured on the whole teaching English in Korea thing and moved back to the States. I loved Korea on the whole and would go back in a heartbeat, but not as a teacher.
Except, y'know, rent, property tax, the price of food...keeping the heat on, being able to afford gas, maintaining social relationships...it's almost like there's a lot of factors in this.
Living in Asia, I am really thinking that jail in a good country like Sweden is way superior to living outside of prison. You could read books, study languages, pause and think about something. More chances for meeting friends, and so on.
Maybe you should try getting rid of your physical clutter first. It might improve your overall happiness instead of a day without it.
There's no vacation/holidays/sick leave included because those hours that you actually don't work are still paid. In other words the vacation and holiday policy is just a discount you get from your employer on the total 2080 hours per year they would have otherwise requested from you.
2080 divided by 37.5 is about 55 weeks, while there is only 52 weeks in a year. If you count it as 40 hrs per week then it is 52 weeks but people usually don't count the extra half hour which is usually a break but that could be your number.
This is probably a better comparison to the korean number for the US: https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/12/17/heres-how-many-hours...
I've never had a non-retail job with paid breaks. I work 40 hours a week, minimum, with my 30 minute lunch off the clock.
How did you get that? When I was an hourly employee, my shifts were 8.5/9 hours clock-in to clock-out, to allow for a 30 minute or 1 hour lunch break.
As a South Korean, my impression is that full-time workers in desirable positions tend to put in around 2,500 hours per year. We recently introduced a new law that puts a hard limit (for any given pair of employer and employee) of 52 hours per week, averaged over a 3-month period. There's been a lot of pushback from businesses that either require or encourage working even more hours.
Book your own stay: http://www.hamptonjail.com/
I don't think stuff like this is very useful to learn about what it's like to live in a country. These are really tiny niches.
EDIT: found it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-16/japan-s-p...
It's referred to as hikikomori[1], the practice of becoming a recluse to avoid the stresses of daily life (school, work, anything). It's surprisingly common and tends to put quite a strain on families, but as it's so common, it's relatively accepted as a disease (or more directly, mental illness) of sorts.
I found this rather interesting that people get locked up to escape daily life. I can see it from both sides. There are times I wish I wasn't doing the same things day in and day out, but I value my freedom to much to lose it.
The Korean Government reduced working hours from 68 to 52, it's still 48 too many (see the four hour working week)
Life is for LIVING. Too many people forget that.
Even the slackers that permeate the software developer industry, those who spend more than half of their workday on reddit can't get all their work done in four hours.
But note that this seems to be a cheaper, ascetic equivalent, of the classic meditation retreat, which is already popular in both the East and the West.
Marketing it as a prison puts a quirky twist on it. This makes for an interesting article, which also fits Western stereotypes.
