Korean Citizens' Reponse to the Inflow of Foreign Worker (Seol, Dong Hoon)

In this paper, I discuss Korean society’s response to foreign migrant workers. The employers, workers, trade unions, civil organizations and individual citizens have met and known them as employees, fellow workers, and neighbors since 1987. The Employment Permit Program for foreigners, the government’s new foreign labor policy since 2004 is understood as a product achieved by a decade of interaction between Korean citizens and foreign migrant workers. This paper examines the Korean citizen’s responses’ impacts on the government’s foreign labor policy from 1987 to 2005.The whole article can be found HERE.

Some Excerpts:

The government designated the period of June 10ㅡJuly 31, 1992 as “voluntary

self-report period for illegal overstayers” and accepted applications to find out the

situation of undocumented migrant workers in Korea. The number of undocumented

migrant workers self-reported during this period was 61,126 and the employers were

10,796. The government extended the permitted overstay period till the end of that year;

in addition in September 1992, the government imported trainees and placed them for

companies also with no foreign investment records.(Seol 2005:2)

Before the launch of the Employment Permit Program (EPP) for foreigners in

August 17, 2004, ITTP was known as the key foreign labor policy of Korea. “Trainees”

under the ITTP are not in most cases being trained for anything and are only filling menial

jobs that Koreans refuse to take. Since they are not classified as workers, they are denied

the rights of regular workers in Korea, including unionizing, collective bargaining and

collective action. Therefore, they are regarded as “disguised workers” (Seol 2000).

ITTP is stigmatized as the program to institutionalize and legalize the “coyote” (Seol 2003:3)

Although the formal foreign labor policy of Korea was ITTP, actually speaking,

the Korean employers utilized undocumented workers much more than trainees (Seol

2000; Seol and Skrentny 2004a). Before the regularization of undocumented workers in

September 2003, only 16 percent of foreign workers residing in Korea were industrial

technical trainees and post-training workers,1 while 78 percent were undocumented

migrant workers (Seol and Han 2004: 45).2 Undocumented migrant workers, although

resolved Korea’s labor shortage and contributed to its economic development, suffered

from unpaid or delayed wages, industrial accidents, occupational illnesses, and

unreasonable lay-off/dismissal because of their illegal status (JCMK 2000, 2001;

HRSWM 2002).(ibid)

The government’s such foreign labor policy resulted in uncontrolled illegal

overstays of migrant workers, human rights abuses, and corruptions in recruiting trainees

(Seol, Choi and Han 2002).

Nevertheless, there also were individuals who took care of the migrant workers

when they became victims of such human rights violations. These people organized

social groups to assist migrant workers in need. Thanks to these organizations and

individuals, Korea with its foreign labor policy often seen as “contemporary forms of

slavery” (JCMK 2000, 2001; HRSWM 2002), at least had a hope to be saved.

It is generally understood in the public that discrimination against foreign

migrant workers is worst of all kinds of discrimination that exist in today’s Korean

society. According to a public poll of Jeonbuk Province residents (Seol, Kim and Chung

2004: 40), the percentages of people answered each category as discrimination is “very

serious” is in following order: foreign migrant workers (37%), education level (31%),

handicaps (29%), name of higher education institution one graduated from (28%,)

irregular workers (23%), hometown (16%), outward appearance (15%), gender (11%),  group.

Migrant workers’ pitiful image in Korean citizens’ mind is raised by mass

media (see Han 2003, 2004). The print media give the plight of foreign workers frontpage

treatment, and television coverage frequently includes disturbing videos on

because its exploits foreign workers, allowsㅡif not encouragesㅡtheir abuse, and leads

to massive numbers of undocumented workers. The public is not friendly to rounding up

and deporting “pitiful” undocumented workers.

In reality in Korea, discrimination against migrant workers still prevails. The

major cause is in its policy (Seol 2004b). The main reason causing human rights

problem is pointed out as uncontrolled number of illegal migrant workers, whose

number maximum 78% of the total migrant worker population in 2003. EPP started in

2004, however, as far as ITTP remains in parallel, improvement of foreign labor policy

still remain as matters unresolved. ( ibid:13).