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A hard-line labor group is stepping up its efforts to cut the current six-day work week to a five-day one, claiming that Koreans are forced to work longer hours than workers in other countries.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) yesterday demanded the government to cut excessive working hours by adopting the five-day work week.

The umbrella labor group, with a membership of 580,000 workers, has threatened to go on general strike on May 31 if the government refuses to meet its demand.

KCTU representatives also urged the government and employers to raise wages by 15.2 percent, stop painful corporate restructuring and improve rights of temporary workers.

``Korean workers are suffering from the overload of work under the long hours,'' said a KCTU director.

He added that the labor group plans to hold mass rallies around the nation to call for the reduction of working hours on May Day, which will fall on May 1.

Korean workers were found to work longest hours among the 29 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Quoting statistics compiled by the OECD, the KCTU said that an average Koreans spent a total of 2,612 hours working in 1998.

Korea posted the longest working hours, followed by the Czech Republic with 2,070 hours and the United States with 1,957 hours.

Most OECD members reported an average of 1,400 to 1,900 working hours annually.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), Korea was ranked seventh in the list of working hours of 75 countries last year.

Workers in Korea were found to have worked an average of 50 hours every week in 1999.

Jordan posted the longest hours with 58.3 per week, followed by Egypt (57 hours), Sudan (56.1 hours), Sri Lanka (54.7 hours), Macao (51.8 hours) and Turkey (51.2 hours).

The KCTU said that Korea also recorded the highest ratio of death from industrial mishaps due to long hours of work.

The ILO figures show that the death ratio over every 10,000 workers stood at 3.33 in Korea in 1997, followed by 1.71 in Thailand, 1.56 in Singapore and 1.20 in Mexico.

The labor group said that Korea emerged as the world's 13th largest economy in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), which was estimated at 483.8 trillion won last year.