Student handout — Discussion & Debate
Banning After-Hours Work Messages: A Debate Your Adult Class Already Lives
Discussion: Should Bosses Be Banned From Texting You After Work?
Background: Korea's National Assembly has proposed a law (several times since 2016, most recently in 2023) that would ban employers from contacting staff after working hours, except for real emergencies. It has not passed yet.
Vocabulary
- right to disconnect
- unpaid overtime
- on-call
- boundaries
- emergency vs. inconvenience
Warm-up: Did you get a work message after 6pm this week? What did it say? Did you reply right away?
Discussion questions
- Is a KakaoTalk message at 9pm the same as being asked to work overtime? Why or why not?
- Should the rule be different for a manager, a small business owner, and a large company?
- France has had a disconnect law since 2017. Should Korea copy it, or is Korea's work culture too different?
- If your manager sends "sorry to bother you but—" at 10pm, what should you do?
- Would you support this law even if it meant your own promotion took longer?
Role cards — pick one and argue it for five minutes.
- A: You support the law. You are tired of checking your phone at dinner.
- B: You run a small company. You need to reach staff fast when something breaks.