[The Editors' Verdict] Why Sleep Only After Death?

Kyung-ho Lee, Head of Issue & Trend Team

A, who just graduated from college, works two jobs. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., A works full-time at a small-to-medium enterprise, and after work, from 7 p.m. to midnight, works part-time at a convenience store. On weekends, A works full-time part-time jobs on both Saturday and Sunday. With fixed costs such as a 700,000 won monthly rent for an officetel in Jegi-dong, Seoul, and living expenses, the 2 million won monthly salary is barely enough to repay student loans exceeding 10 million won. A’s bigger dream is to quickly pay off debt, save money, and retire early as part of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. A goes to bed after 1 a.m., getting less than five hours of proper sleep. A said, “If I can retire by my late 30s or early 40s at the latest, sacrificing social life, hobbies, and even sleep is natural.” A suffers from chronic headaches and sleep deprivation. Many people work two or three jobs due to financial hardship, and shift work often requires overnight shifts.

‘Part-time King’ Mr. Lee incurred a debt of 350 million won during the Asian financial crisis. He slept only two hours a day and worked 22 hours. At times, he worked as many as 10 part-time jobs. After enduring extreme hardship, he repaid his debt, published a book, and gained fame. In his book, he said, “I plan to continue working part-time jobs without faltering for the next 10 years.” However, it was revealed that he passed away from colon cancer in 2014, five years after the book’s publication, which saddened many. It was said that overwork and sleep deprivation caused his illness. Colon cancer is related to lack of sleep.

There was a time when “time is money,” and people advocated splitting time into minutes and seconds through “time-tech,” and the morning person who “gets the worm by waking up early” became a hot topic. Thanks to a president during the Lee Myung-bak administration who only slept four hours a day, the government became a “dawn-shift government” with early morning arrivals, late-night departures, and weekend work. This spread to the Blue House, central government agencies, public enterprises, and financial institutions but was mocked as a “fatigue government” and “overwork government.”

Although the 40-hour workweek has been established and even a four-day workweek introduced, the quantity and quality of sleep in South Korea remain serious issues. The average sleep duration ranks low among OECD countries, and the average sleep time for adolescents (as of 2019) is 6 hours and 3 minutes, more than two hours shorter than the OECD recommendation of 8 hours and 22 minutes. As sitting time increases and sleep time decreases, the obesity rate among children aged 9 to 17 rose more than fourfold from 3.4% in 2018 to 14.3% in 2023. Sleep deprivation is a cause of various diseases and is also a hidden factor in dementia, a major issue in aging populations.

In 2016, the U.S. think tank Rand analyzed wage data and the economic impact of sleep deprivation on workers in five countries (the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, and Germany), with surprising results. In the U.S., sleep-deprived employees caused an annual loss of up to $411 billion (566 trillion won at current exchange rates) and 1.2 million lost workdays. The University of California, San Diego analyzed that people who sleep less than five hours a day experience a 29% loss in productivity, and those with insomnia suffer a 58?107% productivity loss. Increasing weekly sleep time by one hour raises wages by 1.5% in the short term and 4.9% in the long term. The saying “money never sleeps” is true. If you want to earn more money, you need to sleep. “Sleep is not something you do after death; sleep is something you do while alive.” Lee Kyung-ho, Head of Issue & Trend Team