Forget that still unwritten report
or the backlog of paperwork building up on the desk,
on this cold and rainy mid-week night
there can be no excuses to stay late in the office.
South Korea's Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs
will be turning off all the lights at 7pm
in a bid to force staff to go home to their families and,
well, make bigger ones.
I t will repeat the experiment once a month.
The country now has one of the world's lowest birth rates,
lower even than neighbouring Japan,
and boosting the number of newborn children
is a priority for this government,
staring into the abyss of a rapidly ageing society,
falling levels of manpower
and spiralling health care costs.
The Ministry of Health,
now sometimes jokingly referred to
as the "Ministry of Matchmaking",
is in charge of spearheading
that drive and it clearly believes
its staff should lead by example.
Generous gift vouchers are on offer for officials
who have more than one child
and the department organises social gatherings
in the hope of fostering love amongst its bureaucrats.
But critics say what is really needed
is wide-scale reform
to tackle the burdensome cost of childcare
and education that puts many young people off
from starting a family.