stressedout

Seoul, South Korea – Go Kyoung-min, 34, a nurse at Severance Hospital in Seoul, found a new sense of balance in her life during the first half of this year.

As the mother of twin daughters born in 2021, Go often felt guilty about not spending enough time with her children because of work.

But after opting into the four-day workweek offered by her workplace, Go was able to spend more time with her family, attending daycare events she had previously missed and relying less on her in-laws for childcare.

Severance is the first hospital in South Korea to trial a four-day workweek, aiming to improve the work-life balance of its staff.

Under the program, introduced in 2023 following an agreement between labour and management, some hospital employees are allowed to take three days off per week in exchange for a 10 percent reduction in salary.

Staff take turns participating in six-month rotations, after which they return to a five-day week.

The program appears to have improved nurses’ health and wellbeing, enhanced the quality of medical services, boosted organisational efficiency, and reduced turnover rates, the Korea Worker Institute-Union Center said in a report about the trial released last month.

According to the report, turnover among participating nurses with less than three years’ experience fell from 19.5 percent to 7 percent.

Average sick leave per employee also fell by one day during the trial, while it increased by 0.7 days in wards on five-day weeks.

Go said the four-day workweek not only improved her work-life balance but helped her be more focused and kinder to her patients.

“I work in the pancreatobiliary ward, where many patients face critical situations. This makes the workload heavier. With a four-day workweek, I feel I can take more time to listen to patients and care for them with greater responsibility,” she told Al Jazeera.

“My children used to be happy when their grandparents picked them up from daycare, taking it for granted. But once I did it more often, they expected me to be there.”

Go’s experience is unusual in South Korea, a country notorious for its long working hours, where staying late is often seen as a mark of a good employee.

South Korean workers logged an average of 1,865 hours in 2024, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the sixth-highest among developed countries and well above the OECD average of 1,736 hours.

They worked 248 hours more than their counterparts in neighbouring Japan.

While long workdays are still the norm, shorter work arrangements are gradually spreading in the private sector.

Some companies, particularly IT firms and startups, have been experimenting with four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks for several years.

South Korea’s major conglomerates have also shown interest in more flexible work arrangements, with Samsung Electronics, SK Group, and Kakao introducing programmes offering employees periodic breaks of a full or half-day.

Lee Jae-ho, 42, a father of two who works at sports and health technology company Kakao VX, has benefitted from one such program, getting one Friday off each month and working 1.5 hours less on the remaining Fridays.

Lee said working fewer days does not necessarily reduce efficiency.

“When I have a Friday off or shorter hours, I adjust my schedule in advance, so the reduced workdays have little impact on productivity,” Lee told Al Jazeera.

“I have more time to have dinner with my family, recharge, and pursue my hobbies and growth.”

The push to reform South Korea’s work culture has gained momentum since the election of left-leaning President Lee Jae-myung in June.

During his campaign, Lee pledged to cut working hours below the OECD average by 2030 and introduce a four-and-a-half-day workweek.

At a July news conference, Lee reiterated that South Koreans needed to work less, suggesting that a system of long hours with low productivity was unsustainable.

“We have competed more on quantity than on quality,” Lee said.

Cafe24, South Korea’s leading e-commerce solutions provider, implemented a full four-day workweek in July, after previously offering workers every other Friday off, while maintaining employees’ salaries and overall hours.

In June, Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds Seoul, launched the country’s first pilot project of a four-and-a-half-day workweek without wage cuts among local governments, set to run until 2027.

The programme, running until 2027, encourages small and midsize businesses and public institutions in the province to experiment with reduced working hours by providing financial support to cover the increased labour costs.

Some experts and business leaders have expressed concerns about the moves to cut the working week.

Kwon Young-sik, director of human resources at Yonsei University Health System, the parent organisation of Severance, has said permanently shifting to a four-day workweek would cost about 100 million won ($720) per ward in labour costs alone.

“Over the past three years, about 1.2 billion won has been spent on labour costs,” Kwon said last month at an event where Severance’s labour union presented the results of the pilot programme.

At the same event, Lee Kang-young, general director of Severance, said institutional and financial support would be “absolutely necessary” for a four-day workweek to be sustainable.

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

“South Korea is an export-led economy. It faces an uncertain future if it fails to remain competitive globally,” Park told Al Jazeera.

He said the country needed to consider its low birthrate, sluggish economy, and challenges to its global competitiveness.

But workers like Go and Lee hope more people can experience the benefits they have enjoyed.

“There were absolutely no drawbacks. The only downside in my case was that, as it is a pilot programme, only a few could participate, so I feel sorry for my colleagues who couldn’t. Other than that, it ran smoothly without any operational issues,” Go said.

“Just as the five-day workweek was initially met with concern but eventually settled in, a four-day workweek is expected to gradually bring positive changes to society,” Lee said.

Meredith Hayden, a New York-based social media influencer and cookbook author, didn’t start out wanting to create comforting content.

But that’s exactly what resonated with audiences.

She went viral a few years ago by posting about her “day in the life” as a private chef in the Hamptons. Now she has a large following on YouTube for her Wishbone Kitchen brand and her “Dinner With Friends” video series, where she shows herself setting up relaxing dinner parties, making French-style hot chocolate and re-creating a cozy coffee shop at home.

You might see her online wearing pajamas or in bed with her dog while talking to the camera. She doesn’t edit out the parts where she messes up the recipe, saying her fans appreciate the flubs. Hayden, who recently completed a tour for “The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook,” said she isn’t necessarily going for a vibe, at least not intentionally, despite the clear Ina Garten influence.

“This is really just how I live my life,” Hayden, 29, said by phone. “I am glad it comes across as comforting, because I’m definitely someone who gravitates more towards ‘comfort content’ myself.”

“I’m not planning on watching ‘Severance,’” she added, saying she gravitates toward more wholesome, grounded content, such as home makeover shows of the non-competitive variety.

That personal preference aligns with a broader trend among young adult viewers, according to recent data from United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills representation firm. The company’s data and insights group, UTA IQ, compiled stats suggesting that many younger consumers are leaning toward material that soothes the nerves and acts as a warm blanket, rather than ratcheting up the anxiety.

“Comfort content” is like popping a Lorazepam (though not in the excessive dose Parker Posey’s character takes in “The White Lotus”) or CBD gummy at the end of the day. The trend is playing out across TV, streaming, literature and social media, said UTA IQ executive Abby Bailey.

She sees it in the rise of #CleanTok videos (totaling 49 billion views last year), in which people do mundane household chores, as well as robust streaming viewership of nostalgic low-intensity sitcoms including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the successful February debut of a new CBS soap opera, “Beyond the Gates.”

“Somber themes, intellectual depth, cultural satires — those have always defined prestige entertainment, and it’s left many to discount the value and the viewership of this more lighthearted, comforting programming,” Bailey told The Times. “But as audiences are prioritizing their well-being and taking brain-breaks from the weight of the world, the definition of what’s capital ‘I’ important in entertainment is shifting.”

The changing attitudes are particularly noticeable in the young adult entertainment space, which several years ago was dominated by postapocalyptic teen dramas such as “The Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” series.

More than half (58%) of U.S. adults ages 18 to 30 say TV shows and movies depicting young adults have become too dark and heavy, according to UTA IQ’s April poll of more than 1,000 people. More than 70% said they want to see lighter and more joyful TV shows with young people.

That’s not to say that the upcoming season of the dark and sexually explicit “Euphoria” won’t be successful or that the next “Hunger Games” film won’t work at the box office. That type of content still has its place, even as tastes evolve. But studios and streamers appear to be noticing the audience’s shifting habits.

Examples are popping up in the young adult space on streaming services, including Tubi’s 2024 sports romance movie “Sidelined: The QB & Me,” which is getting a sequel. The Netflix teen drama “My Life With the Walter Boys” was recently renewed for a third season, ahead of its Season 2 premiere.

There are plenty of other opportunities now for young people to take mental breaks on the couch, from the rise of “cozy gaming” to the crossover appeal of “healing fiction,” a genre of whimsical books from Japan and Korea that have taken off elsewhere. Olympic diver Tom Daley, who went viral when he was photographed knitting between his events in Tokyo, created a competition show called “Game of Wool” that will debut on Channel 4 in the U.K.

Some millennial parents have turned to gentler, less overstimulating TV shows from decades ago — think “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog” — to co-view with their young children.

Comfort content is certainly nothing new. The term brings to mind the idyllic autumnal walkways of Stars Hollow, the fictional small town from “Gilmore Girls,” as well as just about anything on the Hallmark Channel, which has enough of a following to justify its own $8-a-month subscription streaming service.

But there may be a reason the category is finding renewed purchase in trying times. Bailey hears that theme from consumers who just aren’t in the mood for any more nail-biters. “Time and time again, I get people saying, ‘I just can’t bring myself to watch anything serious,’” Bailey said. “‘Like, all I want to do is watch Bravo.’”

Stuff we wrote

Studio splitsville

As expected, Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies, separating its streaming and studios businesses from the struggling television networks business, the New York-based media giant said Monday.

The Streaming & Studios company will consist of the film and TV studios as well as HBO and HBO Max. The Global Networks company (which is taking on much of the debt) will have CNN, Discovery and other channels.

The divorce is aimed to be completed by mid-2026. Afterward, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav will be CEO of the streaming and studios group, while Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels will run the networks.

The firm previously foreshadowed this move by restructuring its operations along similar lines.

Warner Bros. Discovery thus joins Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which is sweeping basic cable networks, including MSNBC and USA, into a new separate entity called Versant. It’s widely speculated that Paramount Global — if and when the Skydance deal happens — will also eventually unload declining legacy networks.

The breakups reflect an ongoing reality — linear television is in big trouble. The struggles of the cable bundle have continued to weigh on studio finances, with customers moving rapidly to on-demand services.

Indeed, if anyone thought the entertainment business’ bloodletting was over after last year’s series of layoffs, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery disabused them of that notion in recent days.

Disney slashed several hundred employees on June 2. An actual number was not disclosed, but the cuts are significant, coming after Bob Iger embarked on a plan to reduce staff by 8,000 two years ago following his return as chief executive.

The latest layoffs hit film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate financial operations. The cuts happen to land as the company is celebrating huge box office results from “Lilo & Stitch.”

The new downsizing comes amid Disney’s efforts to pare down its production pipeline after binge-spending during the streaming wars. The reduction corresponds to Disney’s efforts to focus on quality over quantity while also cutting costs.

A couple days after Disney’s layoffs, Warner Bros. Discovery cut staff from its cable television channels business. Those Warner Bros. Discovery reductions were smaller in scale (eliminating fewer than 100 roles), but the message to the industry couldn’t be clearer. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has also undergone layoffs.

The question is: What comes next? Many expect the cast-off Warner and NBCUniversal networks to merge at some point, with Paramount channels perhaps joining them one day.

Finally …

Listen: Turnstile’s new album “Never Enough” is out. Also, The Beths have a new tune. Sabrina Carpenter’s latest has already been declared the “song of the summer.”