South Korea plans to start inspecting 35,000 local workplaces next month as the country is gearing up to reduce its conventionally long workweek here, the labor ministry said Thursday.

South Korean workers have the longest workweek among the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In a bid to help reduce overwork by local workers, Labor Minister Lee Chae-pil recently pledged to toughen regulations over the working week.

This year's annual guideline on workplace inspection, set to be completed and handed out to provincial labor offices by February, will be mainly focused on tightly supervising the workweek as part of the overwork reduction plan, the Ministry of Employment and Labor said.

Sectors with notoriously long workweeks, such as grocery manufacturers and metal processing firms, are likely to face the toughest labor inspection this year as the ministry puts its top policy priority on cutting down weekly work hours.

According to the ministry's survey, workers in the car-making sector spend 2,500 hours at work per year while metal processing firms record 2,400 annual work hours per laborer, followed by 2,300 per-year work hours in the food manufacturing sector. The car-making segment underwent an industry-wide inspection by the labor ministry last year.

The annual inspection is usually aimed at regulating illegal worker dismissal, overdue wage payment as well as labor hours and the number of holiday dates.

Currently, the workweek cannot exceed 52 hours, but overtime on Saturdays and Sundays is not counted, and many firms have their employees work weekends in excess of the weekly maximum.

Lee said recently he is considering changing the regulation to include weekend work, so as to create more jobs and bring down the work burden for local workers.

President Lee Myung-bak also touted the plan on Wednesday, saying reduction in working hours may lead to more job creation. (Yonhap News)