Support for a four-day workweek among Korean employees has climbed to 63.2 percent, according to recent workplace surveys, with approval running especially high among full-time workers, women and, most notably, employees in their twenties, 74.2 percent of whom back the idea.
The generational gap in enthusiasm is striking: while shortened-workweek proposals have circulated in Korean policy discussions for years, often framed around productivity and work-life balance concerns common across age groups, the sharply higher support among the youngest cohort of workers suggests the idea has become something closer to a generational expectation among Korea’s newest labor market entrants rather than simply a policy preference shared evenly across the workforce.
The survey results arrive as Korean employers, particularly in IT and startup sectors where remote and flexible work arrangements were already more common, continue experimenting with reduced-hour formats, from full four-day weeks to intermediate 4.5-day arrangements that trim a half-day rather than a full day from the standard schedule. These pilots remain concentrated in specific industries and company sizes rather than reflecting a nationwide shift, but the strong generational preference data suggests employers competing for younger talent may face growing pressure to offer some version of reduced-hour work regardless of whether broader policy mandates arrive.
For a country whose work culture has long been associated internationally with long hours and rigid attendance norms, if imperfectly, the gap between older and younger workers’ attitudes toward the four-day week offers an early signal of how generational turnover within the Korean workforce may reshape employer expectations over the coming decade.
Source: workplace survey coverage via Rsupport, “The Four-Day Workweek: Pros, Cons and Domestic Adoption Cases,” 2026.
