A forty-four-hour week, and two kinds of seriousness

As late as 1989, Korea was still a country on a forty-four-hour week. From February 1998 a five-day week was pushed, in the name of a better quality of life for everyone: a rule that working time should not go over forty hours in a week, also called a forty-hour week. After conflict between labour and management, and after a revision of the Labour Standards Act, staged implementation began in July 2004 — eight hours a day, five days a week, and two days off. Those dates are left with an account by Ryu Jeong-a, a researcher at the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, dated 1 December 2007, held by the National Archives. The extra weekend time is treated as what let people look, after the repeat of labour and ordinary duty, for rest for the body and the mind, and, later, for a more serious way of spending leisure, even as a means of self-development.

People, from birth to death, live and act and grow inside a culture, a set of norms, and a set of institutions, and they form ties, directly and sometimes indirectly, with others. Those who take part in leisure find a new experience in it, and, when they share that experience, a satisfaction and a stronger sense of being themselves. The more that inner reward arrives, the more time they put into the activity, and the more seriously they value it; that, in turn, becomes one of the things that can carry a person back into the repeat of work and duty.

Serious leisure was first set out in 1982 by the Canadian scholar Robert Stebbins, and it has been taken up since by writers in more than one field. A Korean translation of his book, by Choi Seok-ho, Lee Mi-gyeong, and Lee Yong-jae, appeared in August 2012. Recreation specialization is treated as a close idea: the path by which a casual participant becomes, over time, a more skilled one, especially in activities in which equipment and skill matter.

Six qualities, three kinds of participant, and three sides of specialization

Leisure, in this frame, is of three kinds. Casual leisure — watching television, a film, reading, a nap, a walk — needs no special training, patience, or effort, and can be enjoyed in a fairly short time. Project-based leisure is a one-off or short activity that is not very complex, or that appears only now and then: a wedding, a birthday party, a couple’s day, and other event-like occasions. Serious leisure has three kinds of participant, who take the activity in an organised, systematic, and skilled way, and who rarely stay with a single occasion. Amateurs sit between the public and the professional, usually in fields where professionals already work — sport, science, the arts, entertainment. Hobbyists join for their own pleasure more than for a work role, often in collecting, cooking, an accessible or non-professional sport, or games. Volunteers, more altruistic than the other two, help people without a money aim, and, unlike a casual helper on a simple task, may use skill, knowledge, and experience gained in the leisure itself to teach or to serve a community. The types are not always easy to keep apart; motive, a social role, and what a person gives to others are the usual lines.

Six qualities of serious leisure are named. Perseverance is the overcoming of physical or mental difficulty in the course of taking part, and it can bring a sense of control and of being present. A career, or expertise, is the knowledge and skill won by effort and practice, which can repay the person with an inner satisfaction and keep the activity going. Effort is the personal work of getting past social and practical obstacles in order to continue. Inner reward is the satisfaction of a need met and realised through the activity. Identification is a strong attachment to what one does, a sense of being at one with it. A unique ethos is the set of rules, values, and beliefs that belong to the people in that activity. How much reward arrives depends on how far a person has concentrated on the work.

Recreation specialization, set beside that frame, has a further habit of investment: beyond a simple interest, a particular attachment, a passionate entry, and a spending of time, effort, and money in order to reach a higher level. Three sides are named. The behavioural side is the frequency and the hours of participation, through which a more practised skill is built. The cognitive side is how rich a person’s information and knowledge have become, including the choosing of the right equipment and the ability to explain a skill to someone else. The affective, or emotional, side is how central the activity has become in a life, and how much money has been put into it. Other Korean studies cited alongside Stebbins include a 2011 scale of recreation specialization by Lee Mun-jin, Park Il-hyeok, and Hwang Seon-hwan, work on the costs of serious leisure by Kim Tae-hwan and Hwang Seon-hwan in 2017, and a 2023 essay by Jeong Myeong-suk and Hwang Seon-hwan on leisure motives and the wish to specialize further.

A swim taken up after an operation, and a reminder that leisure is not a duty

The personal account is of swimming. The writer had preferred quiet leisure to active leisure, and after a major operation under general anaesthetic found physical capacity reduced. Walking, tried in order to recover stamina, did not do much. A friend’s suggestion, and a light ‘I’ll stop if it is hard,’ was how swimming began. A sports encyclopaedia entry dated 2008, from the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, is cited in passing: swimming is a whole-body water sport, easy to take up, and a typical summer recreation, with a suit, a cap, and goggles as basic equipment. Those were bought at first on a friend’s advice, without much research, in a body still exhausted and stressed. In the water, on a first lesson, the tiredness seemed to ease, and a compliment on a kick, a main element of the stroke, brought a sense that it could be done. From there the writer began to look up technique, and to wonder, even in ordinary hours, how a position might be held and how the breath might stay clear. A light start had become serious leisure, and the writer reads the part as a hobbyist among Stebbins’s three types.

Perseverance is treated as central. A beginner has to get posture and breathing right before freestyle will run, and may swallow water or roll over; patience can bring a truer stroke, and with it an inner reward of control and of being present, which then feeds a wish to move to the next stage. Extra time is spent on videos and on systematic practice — the effort, and the expertise. Identification arrives in gathering knowledge, even of who the national swimmers are, and in feeling closer to other people who swim. The unique ethos is a local rule of the classes, which run as beginner, intermediate, advanced, and training groups: the strongest swimmer leads, the newest or least able follows, and as skill grows a person moves forward in the line. The six qualities, together, are credited with a sense of achievement, of self-efficacy, of control, of being present, and with a healthier body and a better quality of life.

On the specialization side, the clearest change named is a new eye for equipment. At first there was no standard at all; over time, through other people, came knowledge of fabrics and of how a suit clings in the water, and of a solution that must be used if goggles are not to mist — a cognitive change. Behaviourally, free-swim hours outside the lesson are used to repeat a skill. Emotionally, swimming is credited with easing a low mood, anxiety, and stress, not only with a physical recovery, and with a better quality of life; the writer now goes to the centre every day except the Sunday it is closed.

Specialization, the close says, can be a distinctive experience, but it is not only pleasure. Knowledge takes time, skill takes patience, and there may be a cost, and, in a bodily activity, the risk of injury. Even then, leisure is not labour and not a duty. If a person is ill or tired they may rest, and a mistake in the group is allowed. People, it is asked, may already be treating leisure as another competition, another self-improvement they must complete, in a capitalist habit of rivalry. If leisure is remembered as an experience in search of enjoyment, a happier time in it becomes possible. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Ryu Jeong-a, Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, “Implementation of the five-day workweek,” National Archives of Korea, 1 December 2007.
2. Robert Stebbins, Serious Leisure, Korean trans. Choi Seok-ho, Lee Mi-gyeong, and Lee Yong-jae, Leisure Management, 1 August 2012.
3. Lee Mun-jin, Park Il-hyeok, and Hwang Seon-hwan, “Development of a recreation specialization scale,” 2011. Kim Tae-hwan and Hwang Seon-hwan, “Costs of serious leisure by level of serious leisure,” University of Seoul, 2017. Jeong Myeong-suk and Hwang Seon-hwan, “Recreation specialization, effort to raise the level, and intention to specialize, by type of leisure motive,” University of Seoul, December 2023.
4. Kim Hyeon-na, “Extraction and classification of social-psychological factors in leisure and recreation,” Cheongam College, 2008. Jo Hui-ok, “Serious leisure, recreation specialization, and exercise adherence among music-rope-skipping participants,” master’s thesis, Dankook University, August 2015. Lee Gi-cheong, encyclopaedia entry on leisure and recreation; Go Yeong-bok, Dictionary of Sociology, 30 October 2000. “Swimming,” sports encyclopaedia, Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, 2008.

Last updated: 14 November 2026