One Who Walks Toward Servitude

“Envy is the act of handing someone else the controls to your emotions.

That is why I call such a person ‘one who walks toward servitude.’”

Appendix: A Zero-Sum Society in Numbers

“Slave,” as used in this essay, is not a social status.

It describes a state of giving more of your time and mind to others’ judgments, competition for survival, and society’s prescribed games than to your own purposes.

Could we measure that state, to some extent, at the national level?

The OECD does not, of course, publish an official “slavery index” or “zero-sum index.” The index below is an experimental composite I constructed myself using public OECD data.

Zero-Sum Dependence Index

It examines three things.

1. Dependence on Labor

A person’s most important finite resource is time.

A society therefore receives a higher score the more time people must offer to the labor market to survive.

According to the OECD, annual hours actually worked in Korea were 1,833 in 2025.

Germany recorded 1,332, Denmark 1,369, Norway 1,386, and Japan 1,598.

Of course, some countries work far longer than Korea, including Mexico at 2,205 hours and Costa Rica at 2,183.

Working hours alone therefore cannot explain Korean society.

Source: OECD, Average annual hours actually worked per worker, 2025.

2. Lack of Social Support

The second factor is people, not money.

The OECD’s Social Support indicator measures this question.

“Do you have friends or relatives you can count on in times of trouble?”

In 2023, 80.47% of respondents in Korea answered yes.

The figures were 96.06% in Finland, 98.18% in Iceland, 94.30% in Denmark, 94.42% in New Zealand, 90.53% in Germany, 88.04% in the United States, and 87.05% in Japan.

Across the OECD, roughly 90% on average reported having someone to rely on in 2022–2023.

In Korea, it is about eight in ten.

Korea has therefore become an economically developed country while remaining relatively vulnerable in the capital of human relationships that provide support in difficulty.

Sources: OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database; OECD, Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries.

3. Life Satisfaction

The final factor is the outcome.

Competing hard and working long hours are not necessarily bad in themselves.

If people lead more satisfying lives as a result, that too is a choice.

But Koreans’ average life satisfaction was 6.4 out of 10 in 2023.

The OECD average was 7.3.

Korea’s satisfaction clearly improved from 5.7 in 2013, but a gap with the OECD average remains.

Source: OECD, Inclusive and Sustainable Well-being in Korea, 2026.

Calculation

Because the indicators use different units, their raw values are not added directly.

Each country’s position within the OECD is normalized to a score from 0 to 100.

- Longer working hours move the score closer to 100.

- Lower social support moves it closer to 100.

- Lower life satisfaction moves it closer to 100.

Since I have not yet established a sufficient theoretical basis for treating one variable as more important than another, all three receive equal weight.

Zero-Sum Dependence Index =

(labor dependence + lack of social support + life dissatisfaction) ÷ 3

Normalization and weighted aggregation of this kind are common ways of combining social indicators with different units into a composite index.

Results can change with the choice of weights, however, so these numbers must not be treated as laws of nature.

The purpose is not to stigmatize countries, but to question what we call “development.”

An Interesting Point

Initially, I included income inequality too.

Then I decided it should be removed.

Because inequality and zero-sum dynamics are not the same concept.

Someone earning KRW 10 billion by creating a new technology does not automatically make someone else poorer.

Inequality arising from an expanded pie can be non-zero-sum.

Conversely, even if everyone earns similar amounts,

if you must attend a better university than others,

join a better company,

work longer,

and feel your rank has fallen whenever someone else succeeds,

that society can be strongly zero-sum.

So I chose to examine people’s time, relationships, and life satisfaction rather than income gaps.

Here is what is distinctive about Korea.

It is not the OECD’s poorest country.

Nor its most unequal.

Yet

people work relatively long hours,

have comparatively fewer people to rely on in difficulty,

and report life satisfaction below the OECD average.

The OECD’s recent dedicated well-being report on Korea likewise notes below-average social support and the need for improvement.

This is the problem I mean.

Competition caused by insufficient prosperity

differs from competition designed to continue even after prosperity has been created.

If AI and automation multiply productivity dozens of times, yet people still spend most of their days trying to take one another’s positions,

that technology has not liberated humans.

It has merely accelerated the zero-sum game.

I do not believe that is technology’s ultimate purpose.

Expanding the pie so more people become free.

People do not exist for the system;

the system gives people their time back.

That is my vision of a non-zero-sum society.

Note: The “Zero-Sum Dependence Index” is not an official OECD index. It is an experimental measure constructed from public OECD statistics to examine this essay’s concerns. Survey years and data availability differ across countries, so it is best used to interpret structural differences rather than precise rankings.

OECD Zero-Sum Dependence Index v2 Core

The following compares 38 OECD countries across working hours, lack of social support, and low life satisfaction.

1. South Korea — 92.6

2. Greece — 91.2

3. Türkiye — 88.3

4. Portugal — 74.7

5. Italy — 73.5

6. Japan — 72.9

7. Costa Rica — 68.9

8. Chile — 68.9

9. Colombia — 66.9

10. United States — 65.3

11. France — 64.8

12. Mexico — 60.4

13. Lithuania — 59.1

14. Poland — 56.3

15. Czechia — 53.2

16. Canada — 52.3

17. Latvia — 52.0

18. Australia — 51.9

19. Spain — 51.9

20. United Kingdom — 51.7

21. Luxembourg — 49.7

22. Hungary — 47.4

23. Germany — 46.4

24. Ireland — 44.6

25. New Zealand — 40.1

26. Estonia — 38.8

27. Slovakia — 38.0

28. Austria — 35.7

29. Switzerland — 34.8

30. Belgium — 33.9

31. Israel — 32.6

32. Slovenia — 32.1

33. Netherlands — 29.3

34. Sweden — 25.0

35. Denmark — 21.4

36. Norway — 15.9

37. Finland — 12.0

38. Iceland — 5.5

Korea ranks first.

But this does not mean “Koreans are the most servile.”

It means that among OECD countries, Korea simultaneously faces strong pressure from long working hours, weak social support, and low life satisfaction.

At the other end are Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.

More interesting than differences in wealth is this distinction.

Do people use the system for their own lives?
Or do they use their lives to sustain the system?