What If You Won the Lottery but Still Had to Work in Korea?
Imagine winning the lottery over the weekend and showing up to work on Monday. Your boss is still your boss, your coworkers are still your coworkers, and the emails you ignored on Friday haven't gone anywhere. Except now, sitting in your bank account is ₩1.3 billion (approximately US$930,000).
It's the premise of the Korean drama The Ordinary Jackpot (로또 1등도 출근합니다), starring Lee Jun-hyuk as Gong Eun-tae, an office worker who wins first prize in the lottery and, rather disappointingly, still has to go to work.
To someone unfamiliar with Korean housing prices, ₩1.3 billion might sound like immediate-resignation money. But a home in Seoul can swallow a surprising portion of that fortune. Add retirement savings and a few decades of living expenses, and keeping your job starts to sound reasonable.
What makes the drama entertaining is watching how Eun-tae behaves afterward. His coworkers haven't changed, and neither has the office. But the people and situations that once intimidated him don't seem quite so frightening anymore.
Anyone familiar with traditional Korean office culture might understand the appeal.
Korean workplaces have a reputation for being hierarchical. Although that doesn't describe every company, age, job titles, and seniority can still influence how people interact. Even the way coworkers address one another reflects those relationships. You might work beside someone for years without ever calling them by their first name.
Then there's nunchi (눈치), the ability to read a room and understand what's expected without anyone saying it directly. It's useful in everyday Korean life, but particularly relevant in an office where a manager saying, “You can leave if you're finished,” doesn't always mean everyone feels comfortable getting up.
The same goes for hoesik (회식), the after-work company dinner. Grilled meat and a few drinks with coworkers can be genuinely enjoyable. It's less appealing when you've already worked all day and aren't entirely sure whether declining the invitation will be held against you.
These customs haven't disappeared, but attitudes toward them are changing.
In a 2025 survey of 1,035 Gen Z job seekers by Korean recruitment platform Catch, 86% said organizational culture mattered when deciding where to apply. Working hours and work-life balance were major priorities, while unquestioning obedience to superiors was the workplace culture respondents most wanted to avoid.
That's a notable contrast to the traditional image of the ideal employee who stays late, rarely questions the boss, and treats company dinners as part of the job.
Of course, wanting better boundaries and actually maintaining them are different things. It's harder to push back when rent is due, your family depends on your paycheck, and finding another job could take months.
Which brings us back to Eun-tae.
One Korean viewer joked that the premise was funny precisely because it was believable: even with ₩1.3 billion, you'd still have to work. Others enjoyed watching Eun-tae become more assertive with difficult colleagues, although some questioned how realistically the drama portrayed office life.
It's easy to understand both reactions. Watching someone stand up to an unreasonable superior is satisfying television. Doing the same thing when you depend on your job is considerably more complicated.
Perhaps that's why the lottery works so well as a premise. Eun-tae doesn't need to buy anything extravagant for the money to change his daily life. Simply knowing he has a financial cushion makes familiar situations feel different.
Meanwhile, Korean workplaces are still negotiating what employees should reasonably be expected to give to their jobs. Some companies are moving toward more flexible arrangements and less formal communication, while others remain closer to traditional expectations.
The next time you watch a Korean office drama, notice how often the tension isn't about the work itself. It's about who can speak freely, who has to be careful, and who gets to decide when the workday is over.
Eun-tae may still have to show up on Monday morning. At least he can enjoy his Sunday evening a little more.
Comments