[Photo by Yoo Dae-gil = dbeorlf123@]
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) database indicates that Korean fathers get the longest parental leave which is 52.6 weeks. But in real life, most Korean fathers do not get any parental leave at all.
Korean government grants paid parental leave for male workers who have paid for employment insurance for more than 180 days. The law guarantees that the worker gets paid during the leave.
But according to the Ministry of Labor, only 5.4 percent of the workers who took parental leave are male. The main reason for that was “pressure of disadvantage from their company” which topped the list of answers by 53.1 percent on a survey recently carried out by online job information company, Job Korea.
In most cases, when a baby is born, the father gets an average of 3 to 5-day paid leave from the company. A 33-year-old businessman living in Seoul, who had a newborn talked about his feeling about the reality of parental leave, “Of course I wanted to take full parental leave, but I only took three-day-leave.” He said,
“Because I do not want to lose my job. There is a self-mocking phrase among male businessmen ‘If you take full parental leave, and when you come back, there will be no place for your desk at the office.’”
아주경제 박세진 기자 = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
