South Korea’s new policy will create more undocumented migrants
South Korea's new policy entitled “Measure for Improvement in Foreign Workers’ Change of Workplaces and Prevention of Broker Intervention” threatens migrant workers’ freedom of movement and choice of employment as enshrined in South Korean law and several international conventions. The policy will take effect on August 1 2012.
In the previous Employment Permit System, or EPS, migrant workers can change workplaces or employers three times for the first three years and two times in the remaining years. They were also provided a list of employers or companies to choose from. Under the new policy, however, it will be the employers and companies who will receive the list of workers and shall decide then who among them they shall employ.
By restricting migrants to change workplaces or companies, the new policy puts migrant workers at the mercy of employers. Such a condition can only breed more exploitation and violation of labor rights on the part of employers and consequently, the ballooning of undocumented migrants in South Korea.
“Where will the migrants go should their employers choose not to give them salary, put them in slave-like work conditions, deny them food? The new policy only reinforces a modern-type of slavery where migrant workers are shackled to their employers and companies,” said Ramon Bultron, managing director of the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants.
According to Bultron, the unfair migrant labor conditions in South Korea have only created a huge phalanx of undocumented migrants. Further to that, state-instigated crackdowns and criminalization of undocumented migrants did not resolve the said conditions but only aggravated the problems faced by migrants.
“South Korea’s new policy tips the balance even further in favour of exploitative employers by unfairly penalising migrant workers who wish to change jobs,” said Norma Kang Muico, Amnesty International’s Researcher for Asia-Pacific Migrants’ Rights. “In order to ensure continued employment, migrants are more likely than South Korean workers to put up with poor working conditions, abuse and exploitation.”
While South Korean laws are supposed to accord the same rights and privileges to both local and migrant workers, the South Korean government further denies migrant workers such rights and freedoms that push the latter in greater risk of exploitation.