George Orwell described in his 1949 novel ¡°1984¡±, a social order where ¡°Big Brother¡± watches every step you take -- even in rest rooms, via tele-screens which combine TVs with cameras, leaving a civilization devoid of privacy. Half a century on, the number of office workers in the country now stands at 16 million, and they are indeed monitored every second they spend at work, when they eat and even when they have a cup of coffee.
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Staged images of a man captured on CCTV camera inside an elevator at 8 a.m., in a hallway at his company at 9 a.m., at a convenience store at 12:50 p.m., and on the way to the parking lot after work at 6 p.m.
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#At 8 a.m. when a researcher for an electronics company goes to his office and has his breakfast there.
Kim (28) is a researcher for an electronics firm and has his ID card checked daily to ensure he arrives at his office before eight o¡¯clock in the morning. There¡¯s no time for him to eat as he hurries to his workplace, so he generally grabs some breakfast at a staff cafeteria at his workplace. He says, "When I have my breakfast there, my ID card gets checked, and if there¡¯s less then 10 minutes to go before my work time begins, I get a warning e-mail from the HR department. My employer says this is because we need to have some time at our desk to ready ourselves before the day's work begins." Some departments close the cafeteria 25 minutes before the office hour to prevent their staff from falling into bad habits. Warning e-mails of this kind get cc¡¯d to the department director, which creates problems for the offender, so Kim either arrives at work early or skips his breakfast altogether.
#At 10 a.m. when a bank employee works on a printing job.
Woo (30) works for a bank. His company installed some new and efficient office equipment in September, making printing, scanning and copying jobs much easier to complete quickly. The drawback is that the fancy new equipment has a hard disc memory that stores data such as how many pages were printed out and at exactly what time. Woo says, "It¡¯s not on display, but the equipment allows people to know how many pages I can print out and if there has been any wastage, so I have become more careful than before.¡± The equipment was established at the bank¡¯s headquarters and is now used at all of its branches.
#At 1 p.m. when Kim sends an e-mail
Back to Kim, a researcher for an electronics company. He had his lunch, came back to his office and checked his e-mails. A friend of his sent mail to ask how he was doing and he replied. Kim cannot say anything about his company in his e-mails because his company stores everything other than in-house emails and can search his history at any time. This is why Kim uses other e-mail accounts when sending e-mails to people outside the company. Even in-house e-mails that are over 10 Kb are automatically stored. Every e-mail Kim sends that exceeds a piece of A4 paper in length is stored in the corporate database.
#At 4 p.m. when a female bank employee takes her coffee break
Lee (30) works for a foreign-invested bank and the majority of her colleagues are women. She says "My female colleagues and I found a camera in a rest area in the company building on October 24, which the company says is there for security reasons, but cameras are already set up near important entrances and other key areas.¡± In the rest areas, employees play ping-pong, have a coffee, relax and chat, and on occasions female workers change their clothes there. A female colleague sitting next to Lee looked at the camera and shouted, "This is crazy. The camera is violating our privacy.¡±
#At 6 p.m. when a worker for a system maker leaves his workplace
Choi (26) works for a system maker. He says, "When we leave the company, security guards inspect stickers they put on our camera phones." The stickers are placed on our phones by the same security guards when they arrive at the office each morning and if they take a photo whilst inside the company, it leaves a trace on the sticker. This measure is to prevent employees from taking pictures inside the company for security reasons. Choi says, "I cannot use my camera phone inside my company."
#At 8 p.m. when Kim works overtime
Kim at the electronics firm has his ID card checked when he has his dinner during overtime work at night. For Kim to get paid for his overtime, he has to work at least two hours beyond regular work and a further 30 minutes more if he wants to have his dinner at his workplace. If he gets his job done earlier than that, he spends some time doing other things to secure his overtime payment. One method to avoid the additional 30-minute overtime work is to use corporate restaurant coupons set aside for visitors. An official with the firm says, "We store data relating to the employees¡¯ habits, such as when they come to and leave the office, when they have their meals and what e-mails they send. We do this to protect our security and improve their productivity.¡±
Jang Yong-suk, a professor at the Department of Sociology of Korea University, says, "Such practices harm not only the human rights of the employees, but also corporate productivity. Excessive control will force employees to think about new ways to get around it, so companies should control only certain core areas to guarantee their productivity in the long term." Office workers in the 21st Century don't need to keep a diary because their companies do so for them.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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