South Korea Is Determined for International Employees

Samsung telephones. Hyundai automobiles. LG TVs. South Korean exports can be found in just about each nook of the world. However the nation is extra dependent than ever earlier than on an import to maintain its factories and farms buzzing: international labor.

This shift is a part of the fallout from a demographic crisis that has left South Korea with a shrinking and growing older inhabitants. Information launched this week confirmed that final yr the nation broke its personal report — once more — for the world’s lowest complete fertility fee.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s authorities has responded by greater than doubling the quota for low-skilled staff from less-developed nations together with Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh. A whole bunch of 1000’s of them now toil in South Korea, sometimes in small factories, or on distant farms or fishing boats — jobs that locals contemplate too soiled, harmful or low-paying. With little say in selecting or altering employers, many international staff endure predatory bosses, inhumane housing, discrimination and different abuses.

One in every of these is Chandra Das Hari Narayan, a local of Bangladesh. Final July, working in a wooded park north of Seoul, he was ordered to chop down a tall tree. Although the legislation requires a security helmet when doing such work, he was not given one. A falling department hit his head, knocking him out and sending blood spilling from his nostril and mouth.

After his bosses refused to name an ambulance, ​a fellow ​migrant employee ​rushed him to a hospital, the place​ docs discovered inner bleeding in his head and his cranium fractured in three locations. His employer reported solely minor bruises to the authorities, in line with a doc it filed for staff’ compensation for Mr. Chandra with out his approval.

“They would not have treated me like this if I were South Korean,” mentioned Mr. Chandra, 38. “They treat migrant workers ​like disposable items.”

The work will be lethal — international staff have been nearly three times more likely to die in work-related accidents in contrast with the nationwide common, in line with a current examine. Such findings have alarmed rights teams and international governments; in January the Philippines prohibited its citizens from taking seasonal jobs in South Korea.

However South Korea stays a lovely vacation spot, with greater than 300,000 low-skilled staff right here on momentary work visas. (These figures don’t embrace the tens of 1000’s of ethnic Korean migrants from China and former Soviet republics, who sometimes face much less discrimination.) About 430,000 extra individuals have overstayed their visas and are working illegally, in line with authorities information.

Migrant staff usually land in locations like Pocheon, a city northeast of Seoul the place factories and greenhouses rely closely on abroad labor. Sammer Chhetri, 30, acquired right here in 2022 and sends $1,500 of his $1,750 month-to-month paycheck to his household in Nepal.

“You can’t make this kind of money ​in Nepal,” mentioned Mr. Chhetri, who works from dawn to darkish in lengthy, tunnel-shaped plastic greenhouses.

One other Nepalese employee, Hari Shrestha, 33, mentioned his earnings from a South Korean furnishings manufacturing unit have helped his household construct a home in Nepal.

Then there’s the attract of South Korean popular culture, its globally popular TV dramas and music.

“Whenever I call my teenage daughter back home, she always asks, ‘Daddy, have you met BTS yet?’” ​mentioned Asis Kumar Das, 48, who’s from Bangladesh.

For almost three years, Mr. Asis labored 12-hour shifts, six days per week, in a small textile manufacturing unit for a month-to-month wage of about $2,350 — which he didn’t frequently obtain.

“They have never paid me on time or in full,” ​he mentioned​, displaying an settlement his former employer signed with him promising to pay a part of his overdue wages by the tip of this month.

Mr. Asis is way from alone. Migrant staff ​yearly report $91 million in ​unpaid wages, in line with authorities information.

The Labor Ministry mentioned it’s “making all-out efforts” to enhance working and residing situations for these staff. It’s sending inspectors to extra workplaces, hiring extra translators and implementing penalties for employers who mistreat staff, it mentioned. Some cities are constructing public dormitories after native farmers complained that the federal government was importing international staff with out satisfactory housing plans.

The federal government has additionally provided “exemplary” staff visas that enable them to deliver over their households. Officers have said that South Korea intends to “bring in only those foreigners essential to our society​” and “strengthening the crackdown on those illegally staying here.”

However the authorities — who plan to situation a report 165,000 momentary work visas this yr — have additionally scaled again some companies, as an illustration reducing off funding for 9 migrant assist facilities.

Within the many years after the Korean Struggle, South Korea exported development staff to the Center East and nurses and miners to Germany. By the early Nineteen Nineties, because it emerged as an financial powerhouse churning out electronics and automobiles, it started importing international staff to fill jobs shunned by its more and more wealthy native work drive. However these migrants, labeled as “industrial trainees,” weren’t protected by labor legal guidelines regardless of their harsh working situations.

The federal government launched the Employment Permit System, or E.P.S., in 2004, eliminating middlemen and turning into the only job dealer for low-skilled migrant staff. It recruits staff on three-year visas from 16 nations, and in 2015 additionally began providing seasonal employment to foreigners.

However extreme points persist.

“The biggest problem with E.P.S. is that it has created a master-servant relationship between employers and foreign workers,” mentioned Kim Dal-sung, a Methodist pastor who runs the Pocheon Migrant Employee Heart.

That may imply inhumane situations. The “housing” promised to Mr. Chhetri, the agriculture employee, turned out to be ​a used delivery container hidden inside a tattered greenhouse-like construction lined with black plastic shading.

Throughout a bitter chilly snap in December 2020, Nuon Sokkheng, a Cambodian migrant, died in a heatless shack. The federal government instituted new security laws, however in Pocheon many staff proceed to dwell in substandard amenities.

If E.P.S. staff have abusive employers, they usually have solely two decisions: endure the ordeal, hoping that their boss will assist them prolong or renew their visa, or work illegally for another person and dwell in fixed worry of immigration raids, the Rev. Kim mentioned.

In December 2022, Ray Sree Pallab Kumar, 32, misplaced a lot of the imaginative and prescient in his proper eye after a steel piece thrown by his supervisor bounced off a steel-cutting machine and hit him. However his employers, in southern Seoul, sought accountable him for the accident, in line with a Korean-language assertion they tried to make him signal though he didn’t perceive it.

Migrants additionally say they face racist or xenophobic attitudes in South Korea.

“They treat people differently according to skin colors,” mentioned Mr. Asis, the textile employee. “In the crowded bus, they would rather stand than take an empty seat next to me. I ask myself, ‘Do I smell?’”

Biswas Sree Shonkor, 34, a plastics manufacturing unit employee, mentioned his pay remained flat whereas his employer gave raises to and promoted South Korean staff he helped practice.

Mr. Chandra mentioned that even worse than office accidents just like the one he suffered within the arboretum​ was how managers insulted international staff, however not locals, for comparable errors.

“​We don’t mind doing hard work​,” he mentioned. “It’s not ​our body but our mind that tires.”