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By one measure, the Korean workplace got a little less stressful last year. By the measure employers tend to care about most, it didn’t get any better — and the gap between those two facts is where this story actually lives. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, published in April 2026 using data collected from January to December 2025, found just 13% of employees in South Korea are “engaged” at work, against a regional East Asia average of 18% and a global average of 20%. That’s a 1-point drop from the prior three-year rolling average — and roughly where Korean engagement has sat, give or take a few points, for most of the past decade: Gallup’s trend data show it bouncing between 7% and 14% every year since 2012, never once breaking into the high teens that the rest of East Asia now averages.
The case that things are improving
On nearly every emotional-wellbeing measure Gallup tracks, Korean workers reported a better year. The share who said they experienced stress “a lot of the previous day” fell to 39% in 2025, a 3-point drop from the prior period — putting Korea below the East Asia regional average of 46%, though still slightly above the 40% global average. Daily sadness fell 2 points to 13%, well under the East Asia average of 17% and the global average of 23%. Daily loneliness, at 15%, came in below both the regional average (23%) and the global average (22%). And life evaluation held essentially flat: 35% of Korean workers say they’re “thriving” overall, slightly ahead of the East Asia average of 32% and just under the 34% global average. None of that reads like a workforce in crisis.
The case that something is still wrong
Set against that backdrop, the 13% engagement figure looks less like an anomaly and more like a structural floor that calmer moods haven’t moved. And one other number in the same Gallup dataset suggests why workers might not be pushing harder for something better: only 27% of Korean employees say it’s currently a good time to find a job in the area where they live — a 1-point decline from the prior period, and dramatically below the East Asia regional average of 58% and the global average of 52%. Daily anger, meanwhile, held flat at 19%, close to the regional (20%) and global (22%) averages — workers aren’t notably angrier than their peers elsewhere, just not any more invested in the work itself.
What the combination might mean
Lower stress and sadness alongside flat engagement and a historically low sense that better options exist elsewhere is a specific combination, and it doesn’t obviously point to a workforce on the mend. It’s consistent with calm born of resignation as much as calm born of improvement: harder to feel acutely stressed about a job you’ve already mentally checked out of, and harder to feel anxious about leaving a position you don’t believe — at 27% confidence, the lowest of any region Gallup measured against — you could easily replace. Gallup’s data don’t settle which explanation is closer to the truth. They do show that “less stressed” and “more engaged” moved in opposite directions in Korea last year, which is the kind of gap a single headline number tends to flatten out.
Sources: Gallup, “State of the Global Workplace: South Korea Country-Level Data,” drawn from the State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report (published April 2026; data collected January–December 2025, Gallup World Poll).
