In an era defined by AI, can work still be measured by the clock?
From Seoul to Taipei, Tokyo to Beijing, Asia is running a 21st century economy on a labour contract designed for the 20th century
Hwaseong, South Korea, past midnight. An engineer watches a defect pattern surface on her screen – the kind that, caught now, saves a week of wafers. She is locked in, fully absorbed, the way engineers get when a breakthrough is close. But she has to go home. The law says so.
Yet something is disrupting the clock she races against. Artificial intelligence is quietly rewriting what her hours are worth.
Lee has reportedly urged officials to work through the night if needed, to cut through licensing delays, for instance. But while working through the night may seem a virtuous response to urgent national plans, for workers, including the engineers that the chip industrial plan counts on, it remains a violation of labour laws.