Two Books on Karojisatsu (suicide from overwork)

JeongYeop Lee

FEB 20 2022

These days, the media often reports of workers who committed suicide due to work stress. Compared to the past, it seems that interest in these overworked suicide cases have risen considerably. Against this background, there is a reason that since the 52-hour workweek system introduced in recent years, it has rose awareness of overwork and there be some influence from the succession of laws to protect the mental health of workers, such as the Emotional Workers Protection Act and the Workplace Harassment Prevention Act. However, it is unfortunate that most of the articles are merely a list of incidents or just adding whether or not to approve an industrial accident, and that most of the readers' reactions confirmed in the article comments remain pity for the dead or anger towards the perpetrators. What is the structural cause of these repeated occurrences and what is the fundamental method to prevent such tragedies? It is a time for many people to take a step forward with interest and awareness about overworked suicide. At the beginning of this year, I have the good news that two books on these topics have been published one after another, so I would like to briefly introduce them here.

‘The Death of Mr. Johnber’(Johnber is derived from the Korean internet slang, which means to hold on to death) is a book written by Kim Young-seon, a researcher. His book allows you to observe the distance between overwork and death. When we think of overwork, we often think of only working long hours, but he points out that the nature of overwork is different from before as the method of capitalist exploitation changes in modern society. First, as performance appraisal has been introduced, it makes workers “voluntarily” to extend their work and to squeeze their own labor and it intensifies the intensity of labor. Second, the introduction of digital mobile technology encourages competition and increases stress as workers are connected to work continuously even when it is not working hours, such as SNS work orders. Through this point, the author expresses the current cause of overworked death as 'overwork + performance system'.

The author also examines the structural causes of these tragedies by examining the cases, research results, and interviews with incumbent workers about typical industries where overwork deaths occur repeatedly, such as financial companies, racetracks, game companies and postal service headquarters. The commonality of performanceism and meritocracy, which is prevalent in most industries, makes workers perceive that they cannot achieve their goals because they are incompetent. On the other hand, it is impressive that each industry has its own unique causes of intensifying such trends. For example, in the case of game companies, PC games were a mainstream product in the past, but as mobile games become more mainstream, the development period or trend cycle of games rapidly shortens and the amount of work increases, which is an unexpected factor.

This book also analyzes the criteria for recognition of work-related suicides in detail. It compares the actual cases of approval with cases of disapproval, mainly informs specifically in which cases approval or disapproval and also points out the inconsistency of the judgment results. In addition, it sharply points out logical errors in situations in which disapproval occurs over and over because there is a past medical history or the level of work stress is “normal.” These are the contents I would definitely recommend reading not only to those who are interested in overworked suicides, but also to the experts who are actually involved in whether or not to approve the industrial accident.

‘Death of Mr. Johnber’ is a book with a sharp insight into neoliberalism that obscures the link between overwork and suicide, while causing suicide due to overwork.

The book ‘Having Your Heart Hurt at Work’, which will be introduced below, is a book full of kindness that helps anyone interested in the mental health of workers to answer their questions.

First of all, it explains not only what can be called job stress, what mental illness is and why it occurs, but also common misconceptions related to mental illness, such as 'I have a mental illness because I'm weak' and 'If I receive psychiatric treatment, I will be at a disadvantage in my job'. In particular, it contains a lot of practical information, such as which hospitals are good and which diseases can be considered occupational mental illnesses.

It also provides detailed information on what you need to know to obtain an occupational accident authorization in case of a mental illness or suicide at work. For example, it can be helpful to attach information about working hours through company commuting records or transportation card details, or it is advantageous for the injured or their bereaved family to directly attend the deliberation of the disease determination committee and make a statement. It gives a lot of useful tips on how to improve approval chances, so I hope that everyone who wants to apply for workers' compensation due to mental illness should read this book before applying.

Lastly, it also deal with the measures for the promotion of mental health in the workplace, 'Even if there is workplace bullying, if the problem is that the low performers in the team are being bullied because the difference in salary according to the performance evaluation by team is too large, it should be the solution to reduce the weight of performance evaluation rather than to punish the perpetrator', with this example, it emphasizes a comprehensive approach to prevention. Also, when a person with a mental illness is working with or goes on sick leave, even when a suicide incident occurs, it is common to get confused or to react late, leaving after-effects. It is recommended that various people, such as managers, workers, and health managers, keep this book by their side and look for the contents whenever they need it.

I hope that these two books will serve as a welcome, bringing a society that does not have to be seriously injured or killed while working.

JeongYeop Lee

JeongYeop Lee, an Occupational and Environmental Medicine Doctor supporting the Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health(KILSH). We in East Asia share lots of historical and cultural things in common. Sadly, one of the common things is that we all have long working hours and use Karoshi in general terms. Those who activists from Taiwan, Japan and Korea, fighting for labor human rights and health are committed to start Karoshi Watch in East Asia project. We'd like to share Karoshi cases of each country and find out similarities and differences between us. Through this way, we try to find out something doing together in order to let workers be independent and remove the word 'Karoshi' in the workplace.