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Go Kyoung-min, a nurse at Severance Hospital in Seoul, discovered a new sense of balance in her life in the first half of this year.

Go frequently felt bad about not having enough time with her children because of work because she was the mother of twin daughters born in 2021.

However, Go was able to spend more time with her family, attend daycares she had previously missed, and rely less on her in-laws for childcare after choosing the four-day workweek that her employer offered.

Severance is the first hospital in South Korea to offer a four-day workweek to its staff in an effort to improve their work-life balance.

Some hospital employees are permitted to take three days off per week in exchange for a 10% salary reduction under the program, which was introduced in 2023 following a labor-management agreement.

Staff members alternate between six-month rotations and return to a five-day week.

In a report about the trial released last month, the Korea Worker Institute-Union Center claimed that the program appeared to have improved nurses’ health and wellbeing, improved the quality of medical services, increased organizational efficiency, and reduced turnover rates.

According to the report, there was a decrease in turnover among participating nurses who had no more than three years of experience, from 19.5% to 7%.

During the trial, the average sick leave for employees decreased by one day, while the average sick leave for wards increased by 0.7 days on five-day weeks.

Go claimed that having a four-day workweek helped her be more focused and compassionate with her patients as well as improving her work-life balance.

“I work in a critical situation on the pancreatobiliary ward.” The workload is thus increased. I think I can spend more time listening to patients and giving them more responsibility, she said, according to Al Jazeera.

When their grandparents picked them up from daycare, my children were content, they used to think they were lucky. But they anticipated my presence once more when I did it.

In a nation known for its long working hours, where being late is frequently seen as a sign of good behavior, Go’s experience is unusual.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), South Korean workers worked an average of 1, 865 hours in 2024, which is higher than the OECD’s 1, 736 hours average.

They put in 248 more hours than their Japanese neighbors, who were in the opposite situation.

Shorter work hours are becoming more common in the private sector as longer workdays become a commonplace.

For the past several years, some businesses, particularly IT companies and startups, have been trying four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks.

Samsung Electronics, SK Group, and Kakao, one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates, have started programs that offer employees regular breaks of a full or half-day.

Lee Jae-ho, 42, a father of two who works for Kakao VX, a sports and health technology company, has benefited from one of these programs, which gives him one free day off each month and places him on rest for an additional 1.5 hours.

According to Lee, having fewer days off does not necessarily mean less efficiency.

According to Lee, “When I have a Friday off or work shorter hours, I adjust my schedule in advance,” reducing my workdays’ productivity.

I can recharge, have dinner with my family, and work on my growth and interests.

Since Lee Jae-myung’s victory in June as president of South Korea, the push to reform the workplace has gained momentum.

By 2030, Lee pledged to introduce a four-and-a-half day workweek and reduce working hours below the OECD average during his campaign.

Lee reiterated at a press conference in July that working fewer hours and reducing productivity was unsustainable.

According to Lee, “we have fought more based on quality than quantity.”

After previously offering employees every other Friday off, Cafe24, South Korea’s top e-commerce solution provider, started a full four-day workweek in July. The company also kept pay and overall hours.

The first pilot project of a four-and-a-half-day workweek without wage reductions among local governments was launched in Gyeonggi Province in June, which is located close to Seoul. It will continue until 2027.

By providing financial assistance to cover the increased labor costs, the program, which will run until 2027, encourages small and medium-sized businesses and public institutions in the province to experiment with shorter working hours.

Concerned about the proposed working week reduction, some experts and business leaders have voiced their concerns.

According to Kwon Young-sik, director of human resources at Yonsei University Health System, the parent organization of Severance, permanently switching to a four-day workweek would cost roughly 100 million won ($720) per ward in labor costs alone.

At a recent event where the labor union of Severance presented the results of the pilot program, Kwon claimed that “over the past three years, about 1.2 billion won have been spent on labor costs.”

For a four-day workweek to be sustainable, Severance’s general director Lee Kang-young stated at the same time that institutional and financial support would be “absolutely necessary.”

If a four-and-a-half-day workweek became the norm, Park Nam-gyoo, a professor of business at Seoul National University, said he would be concerned about productivity and wage disparities.

South Korea’s economy depends on exports. If it doesn’t manage to stay competitive globally, Park said. “It faces an uncertain future.”

He argued that the nation’s slow economy, low birthrate, and challenges to global competitiveness must all be taken into account.

However, Go and Lee’s employees want others to experience the advantages they have.

“There were no drawbacks at all,” he declared. I feel bad for my colleagues who couldn’t participate because it was a pilot program, which meant there were only a few people in my situation. Beyond that, Go added, “it ran smoothly without any operational issues.”

Gaza City has been under relentless bombardment for 23 months, and the Israeli military’s indiscriminate bombing of it has reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, forcing residents to flee in fear.

An entire family of five, including three children, were killed on Thursday in an attack on a tent in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood as part of Israel’s round-the-clock assault on what UNICEF has dubbed the “city of fear.”

Palestinians were seen clearing up scattered belongings, including two blood-stained pink slippers that lay among the debris, on video from the attack.

When we heard the sound of a bomb, my children and I were sleeping in the tent. My four children started screaming when shrapnel fell on us, according to Israa al-Basous, an AFP news agency.

As a result of the military’s plan to remove nearly one million people from the enclave’s largest urban hub, attacks were reported in the neighborhoods of City’s Zeitoun, Sabra, Tuffah, Nassr, and Shujayea.

According to Mahmoud Basal, the civil emergency service spokesperson for the region, heavy bombardment in the Tuffah neighborhood left at least eight people dead and dozens more injured.

At least two people were killed in Shujayea when an Israeli bomb struck a residential building, according to a source in charge of the ambulance. Additionally, three bodies were discovered dead in a destroyed home belonging to the al-Ghaf family in Zeitoun.

According to Hani Mahmoud, a journalist for Al Jazeera from Gaza City, “they’re moving from one area that is less dangerous, but still within the reach of Israeli military fire, the air strikes, and bombardment.”

Many of the displaced were moving in the hope of finding safety for a few days, according to Mahmoud, only to find themselves re-displaced once more.

Many had fled to the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, but tanks started to erupt into the area northwest of the city center, igniting fires in tent camps and destroying homes.

Hospitals were overflowing with patients. The morgue’s floor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was filled with bodies draped in white shrouds.

As her son’s body lay on a stretcher outside, a woman stroked his head.

Son, who are you leaving me to? Why? Why”? she shed a tear.

Nearly one million people were ensnared in the “city of fear, flight, and funerals,” according to Tess Ingram, UNICEF’s communication manager for the Middle East and North Africa.

On Thursday in Gaza City, 44 people were killed overall.

75 people were killed in the town.

Brigadier General Effie Defrin, a spokesman for the Israeli military, reported that troops now control 40% of the city as terrified residents scurried to find shelter from the bombs.

He claimed that the operation would “continue to grow and grow” over the coming weeks.

The Zeitoun neighborhood’s satellite images revealed the “heavy presence” of more than 52 Israeli army vehicles, according to Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency.

The images, which date from August 25 and September 1, show a blatant pattern of forced displacement of residents west of Gaza City, particularly along al-Rashid Street and the beach.

Palestinians who have fled Gaza City over the past few months have discovered impoverished conditions further south, where people’s mass movements have increased the number of tent camps and raised the price of basic goods.

The arrival of more people from the north has worsened their situation, according to Shorouk Abu Eid, a pregnant woman from Gaza City who was displaced to Khan Younis four months ago.

She told The Associated Press news agency, “There is no peace of mind, no privacy.”

In any case, wherever they go, Palestinians who are escaping are most likely to find death and destruction.

In addition to killing three children, Israel bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Thursday, killing seven people.

And seven people were killed and more injured when Israeli forces fired at a group of people looking for aid near a distribution point in southern Rafah.

Since dawn, Israeli ground and air attacks have claimed 75 lives across the enclave.

US denies that Israel has been violated by France and others.

American Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressed for recognition of a Palestinian state to blame for Israel’s violations of the occupied West Bank as diplomatic efforts to put an end to the Gaza war sputtered.

In the midst of Israel’s terror-related campaign in Gaza, the annexation drive has been gaining steam. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right Israeli, called for the annexation of the majority of the territory this week.

When a reporter asked about the annexation drive, Rubio effectively attributed Rubio to France and other nations that are planning to declare their support for a Palestinian state at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York this month.

We informed all of these nations, and we did. We warned that if you did this recognition work, which is all fake and not even real, you would end up in significant problems,” Rubio said on Thursday.

On Thursday, the US added Al-Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights to its list of well-known Palestinian rights organizations. Without Israel’s permission, the rights groups were targeted, according to Rubio, because they “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court [ICC] to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant were both detained by the ICC for war crimes last year.

France was also alleged to be in contact with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who claimed that Paris would not allow a visit from French President Emmanuel Macron if Paris continued to engage in “efforts that harm Israel’s interests.”