The fight for equal rights: The power of foreign workers in South Korea

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Volumn 24, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 329-359

  Lim, Timothy C ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 24944508335     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437549902400303     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. For details, see "Foreign Workers in S. Korea to be Granted Labour Rights," Asia Pulse, September 10, 1997,
2. and "Government to Implement Foreign Worker Permit System in 1998," Korea Herald, September 10, 1997.
3. See "Illegal Foreign Workers Protected by the Labor Standards Act from Now On," Ministry of Labor: Press Release (Republic of South Korea), October 14, 1998.
4. For an interesting discussion of migrant workers in California agriculture, see Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
5. In fact, South Korea was one of the first countries in Asia officially to promote a program of overseas employment. Unlike a number of countries today, however, Korean laborers often worked for Korean contractors (mainly in the construction projects in the Middle East or Vietnam) or in industrial training programs set up jointly by the Korean government and a host country.
6. Estimates on the total number of foreign workers in South Korea are extremely soft and should be viewed with caution; the figure of 270,000 comes from statistics released by the Justice Ministry in early January 1998. See "Justice Ministry Postpones Plan to Expel Illegal Foreign Workers," Korea Herald, January 8, 1998. (In this article, the figure cited was actually 370,000; but this was almost certainly a typographical error, since all other estimates around this period place the total number of foreign workers at fewer than 300,000.)
7. The peak year for Korean labor migration was 1982, when 196,855 Korean workers went abroad.
8. "Background of the Migrant Worker Movement in Korea," at http://kpd.sing-kr.org/jcmk/info-e.html.
9. Young-bum Park, "The Turning Point in International Migration and Economic Development in Korea," Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 3, no. 1 (1994): 152.
10. "Number of Illegal Workers Rising in South Korea," Reuters Asia-Pacific Business Report, July 7, 1996.
11. See "Korea: Trainees, Dual Nationality," at http://migration.uc-davis.edu/By0Month-MN-Vol-5-98/May98MN.html#RTFToC26. Estimates of the number of illegal foreign workers range from a low of 136,000 to a high of 180,000.
12. Shortly after his election, for example, Kim Dae Jung said that it was "irrational" to employ two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand foreigners when the country faced massive unemployment. See "Kim Dae-jung Negative on Employing Foreigners," Korea Times, December 21, 1997.
13. "Foreign Workers Flocking to Korea," Korea Herald, January 24, 1999.
14. "Foreign Workers Rush to Korea Again," Korea Times, February 10, 1999.
15. "S Korea Earmarks 8.3 Trln Won More To Fight Unemployment," Asia Pulse, March 23, 1999. The actual number of unemployed people in mid-1998 was estimated to be 1,651,000, which was an all-time high and an increase of 122,000 from a month earlier. This figure, moreover, did not take into account 502,000 people who were working fewer than eighteen hours per week and 259,000 who were suspended from work temporarily. The actual number of "displaced workers, then, was more than 2.41 million.
16. See "S. Korean unemployment hits 31-year high in July," Internews, August 27, 1998, at http://www.internewscom.com/english/new-sonkorea/news/k980827c.htm.
17. This includes both employed and unemployed workers. At end of 1995, the figure was a little more than twenty million.
18. Pauline Jelinek, "Influx of Foreign Labor Leads to Harsh Lessons for South Korean Bosses," Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1996, p. A-27.
19. Korea Labor Institute, Labor Statistics (Seoul: KLI, 1996).
20. For a discussion of this issue in relation to South Korea, see Park, note 8, pp. 149-173.
21. Cited in Park, note 8, p. 155.
22. According to the Korea Labor Institute, in 1990 there were 166,000 unfilled positions in manufacturing; by 1991, this figure had grown to 222,000 - an increase of 32 percent in just one year. Korea Labor Institute, Labor Statistics (Seoul: KLI, 1996),
23. and National Statistics Office, Report on the Employment Structure Survey (various years).
24. One small factory owner, for example, pointed out that he had had five openings since the beginning of February 1998, but two months later still had not been able to find even one Korean worker. See "Workers Still Shun 3Ds Despite Unemployment," Korea Herald, March 31, 1998.
25. For a recent discussion of this trend, see "Foreign Workers Flocking to Korea," Korea Times, January 24, 1999.
26. Sam Jameson, "Soldiers to Help Ease Labor Pinch in South Korea," Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1991, p. D-1.
27. At the end of 1995, for example, there were about 176,000 Japanese Brazilians and 36,000 Japanese Peruvians working in Japan. Almost all of these came under the Immigration-Control and Refugee-Recognition Act of 1990, which formally authorized "nikkei" (Brazilians and Peruvians of Japanese ancestry) to work in Japan for renewable three-year periods. See "Japan: Nikkei Come to Stay," Migration News (March 1997), Internet edition at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/.
28. One particularly interesting example of the shift away from assimilation is provided by Kim Dae-joong, the editor-in-chief of one of Korea's leading and most influential vernacular newspapers, the Chosun Ilbo. In an editorial, Kim tells his readers that he once advocated accepting every Chinese Korean into South Korea and paying them wages comparable to other Korean workers. Later, however, he admits that he was wrong. Instead, he warns his countrymen to be wary of "two-faced" Chinese Koreans. As he bluntly puts it: "we [South Koreans] are getting slapped in the face even though we are helping them." Kim also assures his fellow citizens that most ethnic Koreans living in China have not only come to dislike South Korea, but are sympathetic toward North Korea. To drive home his point, Kim highlights an increasing number of crimes committed against South Koreans in China (including murder and assault), and notes that most have been carried out by ethnic Koreans envious of South Korea's economic success. Kim's attitude is shared by many South Koreans, including ones in high-level positions.
29. In this way Kim portrays Chinese Koreans as not only back-stabbing, dangerous, and completely untrustworthy, but fundamentally different from South Koreans. In short, he argues that Chinese Koreans are not really brothers as he once thought, but strangers who happen to share the same blood. See Kim Dae-joong, "Ethnic Koreans in China," Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), September 7, 1996,
30. trans. version in Korea Focus 4, no. 5 (1996): 143-145.
31. Cited in Bruce Cheesman, "Plight of Foreign Workers: An Issue Ready to Explode - Korea," Reuters Textline (Australian Financial Review), March 21, 1995.
32. Cited in "Employers Prefer Work Permit to 'Ind. Trainee' System in Foreign Workers," Korea Times, February 16, 1996.
33. This eighty-nine-page booklet was published in 1996. Cited in James Lim, "Do Not Beat the Foreign Workers," Asia Times, October 31, 1996.
34. "Mutiny on High Seas," Korea Times, August 29, 1996.
35. This started to change in late 1997, when an increasing number of Chinese Koreans attempted to avoid immigration authorities by entering South Korea on small boats. It is difficult to say how extensive this activity is, however, since the government did not release any figures. See "Government to Step Up Crackdown on Illegal Entry of Foreign Workers," Korea Times, September 3, 1997.
36. This should be a fairly obvious point, but for those who disagree it would be useful to consider the government's plans to tighten immigration procedures in response to the country's recent economic difficulties. The Ministry of Justice, for example, indicated that it would begin to closely inspect passports, currency holdings, and schedules of foreigners entering Korea, and would immediately evict those suspected of seeking illegal employment. See "Justice Ministry to Crack Down on Illegal Foreign Workers," Korea Times, December 12, 1997.
37. Technically, there are no legal foreign workers in any low- or unskilled manufacturing, construction, or maritime jobs. Foreign nationals with the proper work documents are classified as trainees.
38. Park, note 8, p. 170.
39. Ibid., p. 171.
40. "Justice Ministry Postpones Plan," note 5.
41. "No New Foreign Trainees to Be Allowed," Korea Times, November 18, 1997.
42. K. H. Lee, "The Employment of Foreign Workers in South Korea," International Sociology 12, no. 3 (1997): 365.
43. J. Woo, "Problems of Foreign Trainee System and Policy Considerations," Korea Institute of Labor, unpublished discussion paper; cited ibid., p. 366.
44. "One in Three Imported Foreign Trainees Working Here Illegally," Korea Herald, October 2, 1997.
45. There are many studies on "everyday" forms of resistance and the power of the weak from which my argument implicitly draws. See, for example, James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) and,
46. James C. Scott, idem., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990);
47. John Gàventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in the Appalachian Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982);
48. Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash, eds., Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
49. Jun Kwan-woo, "Illegal Foreign Workers Continue to Grow: Government Between Rock and Hard Place in Terms of Labor Shortage, Immigration Control," Korea Herald, March 22, 1997.
50. See, for example, a report on a survey conducted by the Seoul YMCA in early 1997, "S. Korea's Foreign Workers Send 70 percent of Earnings," Asia Pulse, February 18, 1997.
51. The same could be said for business efforts to prevent "runaway" trainees. For example, in 1995, the Korea Federation of Small Business offered a "bounty" of 50,000 won for information leading to the location of "runaway" trainees. Needless to say, this offer produced very few, if any, results. See "S. Korea Firms Offer Bounty for Runaway Foreigners," Reuters World Service, February 13, 1995.
52. A govenment official, in fact, stated that factories were excluded from raids in recognition of labor shortages in the manufacturing sector. See "South Korea Contends with Foreign Workers," Migration News (November 1996); Internet edition at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/.
53. "Gov't Kicks Off Crackdown on Illegal Foreigners," Korea Times, October, 1, 1997.
54. "Justice Ministry to Crack Down on Illegal Foreign Workers," Korea Link, December 15, 1997.
55. "No New Foreign Trainees to Be Allowed," Korea Times, November 18, 1997.
56. "Korea: Trainees to Workers," Migration News 4, no. 6 (1997); Internet edition at http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/.
57. "One in Three Imported Foreign Trainees Working Here Illegally," Korea Herald, October 2, 1997.
58. South Korea has always had one of the worst industrial accident records in the world. In 1992, for example, the country's fatality rate in manufacturing was nineteen times higher than Japan's. Even compared with other economies at comparable stages of development, South Korea has an extremely poor record: for the same year, Taiwan's fatality rate in manufacturing was 2.7 times lower than Korea's; Singapore's rate was 2.4 times lower. Figures cited in Korea Labor Institute, 1994 KLI haewoe nodong t'onggye (KLI statistics on foreign labor for 1994) (Seoul: KLI, 1994), p. 93.
59. Quoted from "Cardinal Kim Apologizes to Foreign Workers in Seoul," Reuters World Service, January 10, 1995.
60. Translation by the author.
61. "Cardinal Kim Apologizes," note 51.
62. Six weeks after the sit-in by Nepalese workers, the Ministry of Labor issued instructions that made migrant workers eligible for industrial-disaster compensation.
63. Shin Hak-lim, "Foreign Workers in Korea: Employers Criticize Gov't for Ignoring Biz.," Korea Times, February 1, 1995;
64. and "Policy Towards Foreign Workers; Court to Handle Foreign Workers' Issues To Be Set Up," BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, January 19, 1996.
65. "S. Korean Manager Arrested for Raping Nepali," Reuters World Service, January 11, 1995.
66. "New Court for Foreigners in S. Korea as Protest Ends," Reuters World Service, January 18, 1995.
67. Cited in "Cardinal Kim Apologizes," note 51.
68. Editorial: "Migrant Foreign Workers," Korea Economic Daily, May 3, 1994.
69. Editorial: "Remedy for Alien Workers," Korea Herald, March 3, 1997.
70. For details, see "The Abuse of Foreign Laborer's Human Rights," Civil Society 1, no. 1 (1994): 3
71. "S. Korea to Treat Foreign Workers Equally," Reuters World Service, February 7, 1994.
72. "Court Rules Invalid Gov't Denial of Foreign Worker's Right to Industrial Accident Compensation," Korea Times, January 30, 1997.
73. "Illegal Foreign Workers Awarded Severance Pay," Korea Herald, August 8, 1997.
74. See "Illegal Foreign Workers Protected by the Labor Standards Act from Now On," Ministry of Labor press release, October 14, 1998.
75. The CCEJ had about ten thousand members in 1994 (starting with a base of only five hundred in 1989), and is involved a wide range of activities, most of them centered on issues of social justice, environmental protection, and consumer rights. For a more detailed discussion of the CCEJ, see Bronwen Dalton and James Cotton, "South Korea: New Social Movements," in Garry Rodan, ed., Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia (London: Routledge, 1996).
76. The Archdiocese of Seoul Foreign Workers' Labor Counselling Office was established in 1992 to help Chinese, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Sri Lankan, Pakistani, and Thai workers with an array of services, including legal aid and advocacy.
77. See Miriam Ching Louie, "Seoul Conference Report: Migrant Workers Challenging Global Structures," Network News: National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, winter 1997 at http:// www.nnirr.org/nnirr/network_news/win97/seoul-conference.html.
78. Miriam Ching Louie, Network News: National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Ibid.
79. Korean Council of Trade Unions, "Our History," at http:// www.kctu.org/about.html.
80. Kim Yu-jin, "The Reality of Migrant Workers and Trade Union Solidarity," November 1998 at http://www.kctu.org/ arguments.htm.
81. "Foreign Workers to Join Koreans for Job Security," Korea Herald, April 19, 1998.
82. Kim, note 71.
83. Quoted in Leah Makabenta, "Asia Pacific Labor: In Denial Over Growing Migrant Labor," Inter Press Service, December 8, 1994.