Americans work 10hr days with...
Okay up to that point I'd agree you were talking sense. Now after that point you note the lesser quality of life enjoyed by Koreans. We all know that both Korean countries, Japan and China have stupidly high standards for their workforce that lead to conditions where they are essentially serf of the corporation (in North Korea's situation they are just getting fucked by a dictatorship as you know). This "salary-man" bullshit is allowed to exist because the majority of the workforce tolerates it and no cohesive union action or societal change has taken place to mandate change. It is a disgusting way to turn humans into commodity. You can point to China/Japan and South Korea as innovators and technologists but this is massively debatable as America continues to provide a better work life balance and contribute just as much if not more in innovation and tech.
You make a somewhat erroneous claim about American life. I was exposed to American life and many if not most companies are still doing a typical 9 to 5 with much make work. You might be massively biased as I presume you are is a tech worker (awsolutionarchitect would indicate this) which is one of the poorest career choices in terms of work life balance (I too am a tech guy). Tradesmen in America are working long hours as you say but those working legally with the right tickets are by far creaming it compared to NZ tradies. Those working min wage jobs are getting fucked much the same as kiwi min wage workers but they have the option of choosing to live in a place with low CoL and comparably high wages. America also has had cities cleaner and nicer than Auckland before; as a result of "compassionate" liberal policies and aggressive offshoring/outsourcing of low skilled jobs this cities have been shat on. Also the population is much much larger leading to an increase in observable homeless and druggies etc.
You are getting back on track when you say that we should upskill like Korea, Japan and China. That would require corporations choose to create loyal employees by providing them this training and upward mobility which many Kiwi companies or companies operating in NZ are too selfish and short sighted to do. University could be cheaper but university is already relatively cheap given the loan scheme and it is piss easy to get into.
I just don't think you should take the worst aspects of completely different societies and compare them to the best aspects of NZ. i.e. I don't think you should take the work life balance of NZ and compare it to SK as it serves little purpose other than to make South Korea look regressive.
tl;dr you are somewhat right but I still think your are somewhat wrong