hankyoreh

Han Jeong-suk, Seoul National University professor of Western History

I’ve met many of the people who went to work as miners and nurses during the sixties and seventies, when the Korean economy was in dire straits and when Germany needed workers. Some stayed more than 20 years, and some acquired German citizenship. I’ve heard them reminisce about the difficulties of life in a foreign land. One among them shook a little when he told me of how he had an argument at work and had to fight while thumbing through a dictionary to look for the right words to express himself. Some of these overseas Korean workers contributed much to the development of Korean democracy and the labor movement; others received doctorates and now teach, and others are prominent in the art world.

A fire recently broke out at the Yeosu immigration detention facility and in the tragedy that ensued, a number of migrant workers died. It was in the early nineties that Korea started changing from a country that sent labor overseas to one that uses workers from elsewhere. It seems on the surface as if Korean society has outgrown to some degree the unfriendly attitude it used to have towards migrant workers. Under a program titled "industrial training," the country forced migrant workers to come to Korea as "industrial trainees," thus receiving low wages for the first of their (maximum) three years of employment. But the problems that this system created were serious, and starting this year, such workers can be hired regularly. A recent court judgment found that migrant workers are allowed to establish unions, even if they are undocumented workers or workers who have "violated their status of sojourn."

The tragedy in Yeosu, however, makes me wonder if there has been fundamental change. Korea has continued to coercively arrest, detain, and deport undocumented workers. Trying to run, these workers have fallen to their deaths on subway tracks, defenestrated themselves, and so on. This latest tragedy revealed all the problems that have been accumulating. There have even been those who, just because they were undocumented workers, have been worked to death without yet having received any pay from their employers.

Most of the migrant workers who become "undocumented" end up that way because they have overstayed their visas. Korea tries to keep them from qualifying for Korean citizenship by giving them short visa periods, then hiring new arrivals. However, migrant workers are often unable to find work if they return to their countries of origin and need to be able to pay the fees they owe the agencies that got them here, and so they often have to stay. The way to reduce the number of undocumented workers would be to either help migrant workers become members of society by allowing them to continue to fill needed vacancies instead of using them as expendables and sending them away, or to help them return to their countries with new skills that help them resettle there.

We are all foreigners the moment we travel more than a few dozen minutes on a ship or airplane. Capital moves about without borders in this day and age, but there are still a lot of regulations on the movement of labor. No small number of Koreans seek jobs overseas these days, as well. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the "International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families" in the early nineties. It defines "migrant worker" as "a person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a renumerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a national." A Korean working for the foreign offices of Samsung or Hyundai are migrant workers while in those positions. As globalization continues, it becomes more likely a person is going to become a migrant worker.

Korea has yet to ratify this UN convention, one designed to recognize the rights of migrant workers as universal rights and to protect migrant workers. There are increasing calls for Korea to join the convention and set an example, being the country that produced the current UN Secretary-General. This is clearly something that needs to be given ear to. It is shameful to bring people to Korea to work because we need them and then treat them coldly after they have lived here and contributed to the national economy. In Germany, they call migrant workers Gastarbeiter, meaning "workers who’ve come as guests." Are we giving migrant workers proper treatment as our guests?

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]