Candidate Lee Jae-myung talks with company employees and says ”The absolute working hours in Korea are too long” = Korean media

On the 30th, Lee Jae-myung, presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, held the first meeting with office workers since the establishment of the party's Central Election Strategy Committee, and listened to the voices of those in attendance.
Candidate Lee held a meeting with company employees at a studio in Guro-gu, Seoul, that afternoon. He appeared in a grey suit without a tie and took notes on what the attendees said in his notebook.
Candidate Lee said, "Korean monthly wages are nominally rising, but in many cases they are not keeping up with the rate of inflation," and added, "Salaried workers are already in a position where they have to live with their glass wallets, and even if their nominal wages are rising, they are still unable to keep up with the rate of inflation."
"If you pay more than you can afford, your tax rate will go up, and your actual monthly salary will not go up, but your taxes will go up," he said. "In most cases, pensions are not keeping up with the inflation rate, and that's why the pensions are also not keeping up with the inflation rate.
"If we raise the tax-saving account policy to a certain level, it will be better," he said. When a company employee said, "The government's tax-saving account policy has changed, and I don't know what to believe in to invest," Lee replied, "I'm frustrated.
Candidate Lee said, "The absolute working hours in Korea are too long. They need to be reduced," and added, "Long working hours do not mean that the living standards of the people are low.
"The era of high productivity is over," he said. "Until now, we had a high-growth society, and once you got a job, you were guaranteed employment until retirement, but now jobs have become very unstable."
"I feel sorry for the fact that I have lived in a much better world than recent generations," he said. After the meeting, Lee told reporters, "The housing issue (for company employees) seems to be the most important issue.
"One of the participants said that in order to come to Seoul and get a job, he would need at least 500,000 to 600,000 won (about 60,250 yen) in rent per month," Lee said.
He told me that it would cost him an additional 10,000 yen (1,000 yen) to live there and that it was difficult to make ends meet, but while it is not easy to fundamentally solve the issue of people's homes and workplaces being far apart, it is an area that requires a lot of consideration."
The participants in the meeting were people in a variety of situations, including a company employee in her 20s who was about to get married, a working mother in her 30s who was working while raising children, and a husband in his 40s who was preparing for retirement.
Participants included company employees who had been selected for the event.