South Korea will force workers to go home by shutting off their computers

South Korea wants its government workers to stop working so hard.

Federal employees are putting in too many overtime hours, BBC reports, so the local government is taking extreme measures to make sure they head out on time: Employee computers will be automatically powered down at 8 p.m. sharp every Friday.

The local government in Seoul, South Korea's capital city, is rolling out the new initiative starting later this month, BBC reports, in an effort to stop a "culture of working overtime." In April, the shutdown will start a bit earlier, at 7:30 p.m. By May, the initiative's final phase, the workday will end at 7 p.m.

Government employees in South Korea work an average of 2,739 hours a year, about 1,000 hours more than their counterparts in other developed countries. Lawmakers have been trying to crack down on overworked employees, reducing the maximum for weekly work hours from 68 to 52 earlier this month.

The South Korean government will consider exemptions for the new lights-out policy, reports BBC, and more than two-thirds of government workers have already asked to be excluded. The Verge reports that this is not the first instance of government-regulated screen time in the country: Children were previously barred from playing online video games past midnight unless they had parental permission. Read more at BBC.