OECD says Korean men working the most years

Koreans are known for their long working hours, and recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that the custom continues even after they retire.

The OECD said that among workers in advanced countries, Korean men work for the longest period after retirement.

Korea’s official retirement age is 60, but Korean men on average work another 11.1 years more before they effectively retire.

Mexican men had the second-longest interval between official retirement and effective retirement, with 7.3 years, followed by 4.4 years for Chilean men. Among women, Korean women came in second with 9.8 years, following Chilean women, who work 10.4 years after official retirement.

Korean men’s average life expectancy was 84.1 years, which gives them only 13 years to live after they effectively retire. The OECD average post-effective retirement span was 18.1 years. The figure for Korean women was 17.3 years given their average life expectancy of 87.2 years, and that was also shorter than the OECD average of 22.5 years.

French men and women had longest post-effective retirement period, 27.4 years for women and 22.6 years for men.

A relatively weak pension infrastructure was a factor in Koreans working after retirement. There is also a higher amount of self-employed people in Korea, who tend to work longer. About 29 percent of the people with jobs in Korea were self-employed in 2010, as opposed to the OECD average of 15.9 percent.

BY MOON GWANG-LIP, KIM KI-CHAN [joe@joongang.co.kr]