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Japan's public broadcaster has vowed to reform its working practices as it revealed that a young reporter died of heart failure after logging 159 hours of overtime in a month.
NHK reporter Miwa Sado, 31, who had been covering political news in Tokyo, was found dead in her bed in July 2013, reportedly clutching her mobile phone.
NHK eventually made the case public four years after, bowing to pressure from Sado's parents to take action to prevent a recurrence.
It is also an embarrassing revelation for NHK, which has campaigned against the nation's long working culture.
Sado covered Tokyo assembly elections in June 2013 and an upper-house vote for the national parliament the following month.
She died three days after the upper-house election.
"With Miwa gone, I feel like half of my body has been torn off. I won't be able to laugh for real for the rest of my life,” she added.
The revelation shocked the nation as NHK has actively reported tragic deaths at other companies, including the 2015 suicide of a young woman at major advertising agency Dentsu, after logging more than 100 hours of overtime a month.
"We are sorry that we lost an excellent reporter and take seriously the fact that her death was recognised as work-related," President Ryoichi Ueda said on Thursday.
"We will continue to work for reform in cooperation with her parents," he told reporters.
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