"My son finds customer service too difficult and feels too much pressure due to performance targets. Could you transfer him to another department?" On the phone is the mother of a twenty-something employee. Although Park Yoo-jin, a department head at a national investment company in Seoul, did not comply with the request, he should not have been surprised. Calling your child's employer to ask for favors has become common practice in South Korea. Some parents, dissatisfied or worried about their offspring, even threaten to contact the National Labor Relations Commission. "Today, it's not uncommon for them to accompany their children to job interviews," admitted an anonymously interviewed executive from a recruitment company.

This behavior is not limited to the workplace. A university professor reported receiving multiple calls from parents asking to move classes to a lower floor to "make class access easier for their child" or to increase the student quota in his courses to ensure their offspring "can attend." Others do not hesitate to pressure for a grade change or an increase in average scores.

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