International Sociology and International Sociology Reviews

‘Work and well-being’ is our Topic of the Month for February 2024. On this topic, enjoy Free Access to this article by Yoo-Jean Song (Dong-A University, Korea) and Yun-Suk Lee (University of Seoul, Korea) published in International Sociology, Work hours, work schedules, and subjective well-being in Korea. Read on to know more about the authors’ trajectory and work.

Why are you working on this topic? Could you share an experience, a fact or a person who made you get engage on that research?

Y-S Lee: Korea is well-known for long work hours. But we can observe that while night workers are generally miserable and depressed, some Korean workers feel a sense of accomplishment and enhanced self-esteem when they work at night. We wondered what makes contrasting differences and this question is the starting point for this project.

What would you emphasize about your academic trajectory? Can you highlight which have been your academic positions, universities, awards, departments and research centers?

Y-S Lee: We are all interested in time through our academic careers and fortunately Statistics Korea has collected and distributed wonderful time diary data every five years since 1999. We are convinced that the Korean time diary data have fascinating features for researchers on time uses. For example, in each selected household all household members aged 10 or older participate and so researchers can compare husbands and wives or parents and children. Due to this aspect of the sampling scheme, we examined how the father and the mother in dual-earner couples organize their times on work and care and this study has been published in another journal (Yun-Suk Lee and Yoo-Jean Song, 2023, “How Do Wives and Husbands in Dual-Earner Couples in Korea Coordinate Work Hours and Childcare?”, Journal of Comparative Family Studies).