BUSY, BUSY

South Korea, the busiest nation in world. I've begun to experience this first hand since Eun-mi leaves the house at 7:30 (sometimes 5:30) everyday to go to work, and then after work she often attends church or various meetings preparing for church, so it can be quite frustrating feeling (quite selfishly) like "i've come all this way and I still don't get to see her"  - but we've had some good honest conversations about it and actually it's more a case of us needing to learn how to do things 'Together' - things like church we should be able to attend together and therefore not have to feel like it's separate from our relationship. The issue is of course that my Korean, although improving, is not yet up to church standards (understanding all the sermon, or engaging in small groups). But i'll improve, and in time hopefully we'll be more at ease. 

Actually as far as Korean standards go Eun-mi has fairly decent working hours, its just she travels a long way to get to work.

But if you're working until about 7 or 8pm each day - and then you eat and take an hour subway home it's already 9 or 10pm, which means you have about 2 hours before you should go to bed... 

Then I guess my question is "how can you possibly have a life outside of work?" 

Perhaps weekends? but then most people work on a saturday too, but christian go to church on saturday and sunday, which is great - but actually they work pretty hard there too... an unfortunately for me church isn't the easiest place for developing a relationship (which seems very backwards).

Or perhaps holidays? on average koreans get 6 days holiday a year! lets say, in a hypothetical yet common situation where husband and wife are both working... and then have a child, how can a family function at all? when would you have time for each other and not be exhausted? And then the next generation is burdened with the exact same expectation as they are drilled at school and at after school classes - most kids don't get home from school until the evening, and there are constantly exams and tests, everyones ability is measured and put in competition with one another... this is starting to sound like a rant, I guess it just feel like an injustice to me. I  hope the Korean people will one day see it like that too.