[Insight & Opinion] How About Rearranging Fragmented Public Holidays?

The six-day holiday period, including Chuseok, has come to an end. This was made possible thanks to the designation of October 2nd as a temporary holiday. Although returning to daily life after a long holiday is a bit disappointing, the thought of "Now that I've rested, I should work hard until the end of the year" suggests that the effect was sufficient.

In 2023, the number of holidays based on a five-day workweek is 117 days. This means resting for 32% of the year. While this number may seem considerable, reflecting on our daily lives often makes it hard to believe. The reason for this feeling is that many holidays come with obligations to do something. During Seollal and Chuseok, one must visit their hometown, and on Children's Day, activities are centered around the children. Although not official holidays, Parents' Day also requires visiting parents and doing something for them. Although these days are clearly marked in red on the calendar, in reality, people often spend busier and more tiring times than on weekdays and return to work exhausted. Furthermore, when public holidays coincide with weekends, the actual number of days off decreases.

Fortunately, since 2014, a substitute holiday system has been implemented for Seollal, Chuseok, and Children's Day, and from this year, it has been extended to Christmas and Buddha's Birthday, ensuring some degree of guaranteed holidays. Statistically, South Korea's holidays are not significantly fewer compared to major countries overseas. However, the reason we feel the holidays are insufficient is that it is difficult to secure continuous and long holidays. In the United States, among the 10 federal holidays, six have fixed weekdays, and except for Thanksgiving, five are all designated on Mondays. The remaining four holidays also have substitute holiday systems, allowing for extended holiday periods. In Japan, Coming of Age Day (January), Marine Day (July), Respect for the Aged Day (September), and Sports Day (October) are designated on Mondays to guarantee long weekends. Additionally, Japan designates weekdays between holidays as holidays, enabling Japanese workers to have three-day holidays every month except June.

Adding more public holidays to expand holidays is difficult due to conflicting interests among many parties. Ultimately, the remaining method, as in other countries, is to secure long holidays by designating holidays based on weekdays rather than specific dates. For Independence Movement Day or Liberation Day, designating the Monday or Friday of the week containing the commemorative day could be considered, and for Seollal and Chuseok, designating Wednesday through Friday of the respective week could guarantee a five-day holiday.

In fact, what should be fundamentally pursued beyond adding holidays is the reduction of working hours. As of 2021, South Korea's annual working hours are 1,915 hours, which is 20% longer than the OECD average of 1,601 hours. Compared to Germany, which has the shortest working hours at 1,349 hours, we work 50% more. While reducing working hours through social consensus is ideal, discussions on reducing working hours in South Korea are mainly limited to certain sectors such as large corporations and the public sector due to relatively high self-employment rates and management difficulties in small and medium-sized enterprises.

As a result, we have adopted the designation of public holidays through laws applicable to everyone as a detour to reduce working hours. The reason why controversies and conflicts surrounding public holidays are more intense than in other countries lies here. Rather than adding more public holidays, a realistic alternative is to rearrange existing public holidays to allow for proper rest and leisure.

Choi Jun-young, Legal Specialist at Yulchon LLC

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.