Seven out of 10 South Korean companies closing for this year's Chuseok holiday plan to take the full four days off, a survey showed.
The Korea Enterprises Federation said on the 17th that 76.5% of companies shutting down for the holiday will close for four days, based on a survey of 601 firms nationwide with five or more employees conducted from the 1st to the 7th of this month. This year's Chuseok holiday runs four days, with the public holidays of Sept. 24-26 followed by a Sunday.
The next-largest group, 14.2%, said they would close for five days or more, while 9.3% said they would take three days or fewer. Among those planning three days or fewer, the most common reason was that work was unavoidable to meet delivery deadlines even though the workload was not heavy, cited by 46.0%, followed by a heavy workload at 14.0%.
The share of companies planning to pay a Chuseok bonus was 61.0%, down 2 percentage points from last year's holiday. By company size, 66.7% of firms with 300 or more employees planned bonuses, compared with 60.3% of those with fewer than 300.
Among payment methods, paying only through regular bonuses was the most common at 65.3%, followed by separate one-off bonuses only at 30.8% and a combination of both at 3.9%.
Among firms paying Chuseok bonuses, 95.7% of those with 300 or more employees used regular bonuses, well above the 65.3% at smaller firms. Conversely, 37.9% of companies with fewer than 300 employees paid separate bonuses, far higher than the 13.0% at larger firms.
Only 9.1% of respondents said business conditions this Chuseok had improved from a year earlier. Some 45.2% said conditions had worsened, while 45.7% described them as similar.
The share saying conditions had worsened was down 11.7 percentage points from 56.9% in last year's survey.
The decline was steepest among companies with 300 or more employees, where the share citing worsening conditions fell to 29.4% this year from 49.3% a year earlier. At firms with fewer than 300 employees, the figure fell to 47.2% from 57.9% over the same period. A KEF official said the results reflected a higher economic growth forecast for this year than last.
