Misaeng’s office, drinking after work, and what healing is said to mean

The drama Misaeng, the notes say, shows today’s office workers without varnish, living through fierce days: work that seems never to end, overtime, watching the boss, not leaving for home, and, in some cases, being sharply blamed even when the fault is not theirs. At university, drinking was mostly a pleasant thing done for fellowship; at work, it is mostly drinking in an uncomfortable setting where one cannot even get drunk if one tries. Korea’s social structure, they write, also makes it hard to unwind that fatigue of mind and body at home.

Accumulated mental stress and physical fatigue will, the writer thinks, explode at some point, yet in a cruel competitive society rest is treated as something that cannot exist. The piece is therefore aimed at office workers who need healing but find setting aside time itself a burden — among them, those in their fifties who cannot avoid frequent drinking gatherings — and it offers methods that can be practiced in ordinary daily life.

Healing, often called “healing” in everyday speech, still carries the sense of curing an illness, but here it is said to mean more than that: a psychological steadiness that eases the mind and, through it, the body as well. Some people find that steadiness in a hearing element such as classical music or white noise; for some an olfactory element such as aromatherapy is effective; some find it in simple work that still lets them use their creativity, such as calligraphy or coloring. For a person who, even when a little tired, finds a new energy by discovering a different self in a new place, travel can be a method. On social media a good meal and time with easy friends are often called healing, and if that process brings rest to the mind and recovery to the body, the notes say that too can be healing. Anything that gives a person psychological steadiness can be a method. For those who have not yet found one, or for whom a method such as travel takes a large decision before it can be practiced, generally recommended methods are set out by the day, the week, the month, and the year, to be combined or chosen as they fit. The unique body does not assign each method to one of those units, and no such mapping is invented here.

Meditation as a hard inner journey, and movement that is not only yoga

Meditation is said to mean closing the eyes and thinking of the shape of the mind: thinking as deeply and quietly as wanting to see oneself before coming into the world. For people who live through endless busy days, in which even the thoughts in the head will not stay under their control, a time to explore the self is said to be indispensable. Modern people, the notes write, give much attention to wounds of the body, and technology has advanced rapidly there; but shame, inferiority, a habit of comparison, low self-esteem, and a wounded pride are given little time or care, while people simply stay with the busy work in front of them.

Today, they write, we want to rest but work, want to cry but smile, want to run out but stay in our seat, in order to succeed and to be recognized. A person may have lived by pursuing outside things such as money, honor, or society’s gaze, and may one day seem to have reached them, and still feel unhappy. Meditation is a process of finding what has sunk to the depths of the mind, forgotten in daily life. From the outside it may look like no more than sitting straight, with the back held upright and the eyes closed; because it is an exploration of an inner world that no one else has explored, it is also called a harder journey than any other.

Exercise is then offered as a mind-body method because it can serve physical health and psychological health together. There are many kinds of movement that can work as psychological treatment, and there is no need to insist only on yoga, which is the kind commonly known. Yoga’s base for steadiness and balance, they write, is the matching of breath and movement: relaxing muscular tension while concentrating on the breath, so that consciousness gradually awakens and grows. A recently published study, as the notes put it, is said to show that rolling the eyes has an excellent effect in treating trauma. The basis given is that the adaptive information-processing system, a mechanism for the brain’s healing, is designed to restore a healthy psychological state, and that that processing takes place in REM sleep, a state of rapid eye movement. No year is attached to that study in the unique body, and none is invented here. From yoga and Pilates to running, walking, or climbing stairs, they write, any bodily activity that gives a person psychological steadiness can be healing.

City strain, forest bathing, and claims left as the notes give them

Human beings, the notes recall, are also part of nature, and some people are stressed simply by the fact of belonging to a bleak urban environment and a busy life. Conditions that, they say, did not exist before cities developed — atopic dermatitis, adult acne, sick-building syndrome — sometimes appear for no reason other than living in a city, in an artificial environment.

Forest bathing is defined, from a dictionary, as walking in a forest, or exposing the whole body to the forest’s air, for treatment or health. The word itself, they write, already implies that walking among the trees and breathing fresh air is done with treatment or health in view. In Korean medicine, a person under stress is said to produce too many positive ions, and to ease that stress by absorbing negative ions from the forest. Forests also release phytoncide, a natural bactericide, which is said to help ease skin symptoms caused by city fumes and polluted air.

In Germany and some other European countries, forest treatment is said to be included among the items of medical coverage; in Japan, a study is said to have found that, in the course of forest bathing, the activity of NK cells, which kill cancer cells, rises. Besides these, the sounds of nature, indirect sunlight through leaves, and the visual effect of a beautiful forest are expected to help psychological steadiness. Phytoncide is said to be released more in coniferous forests, and to last longer near a lake or a valley, where there is less wind and more humidity; bathing from early summer to autumn, between 10 a.m. and noon, is said to be more effective. Those claims stay as the notes give them, without invented years. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Notes on mind-body healing for office workers, read through the drama Misaeng’s unvarnished picture of overtime, watching the boss, and drinking after work.
2. Meditation as a search of the inner world; movement that need not be only yoga; and a recently published claim about eye-rolling and trauma, left without an invented year.
3. Forest bathing as the dictionary and the notes define it, with Korean-medicine claims about ions and phytoncide, and with German, other European, and Japanese claims left as they are given.

Last updated: 14 November 2026