hankyoreh

Filipino caregivers taking part in the trial program for hiring foreign domestic helpers arrive in Korea on Aug. 6, 2024, via Incheon International Airport. (pool photo)

Having arrived in Korea with E-9 employment permit system visas and aspirations of achieving the “Korean dream,” 100 prospective Filipino “caregivers” underwent joint training in safety, health, and other areas at an education center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on Wednesday as they prepared to enter a pilot project for bringing in overseas domestic workers.

With the project’s launch a month away, experts pointed to three issues to be addressed: putting dispute resolution procedures in place, overcoming discriminatory treatment in areas including the minimum wage, and fairly assessing the project’s progress.

To begin with, they called for the Korean government and the city of Seoul to establish procedures for addressing disputes that arise between service users and workers.

The national government has said the institutions providing the services will employ two interpreters in order to prevent and respond to potential conflicts between the Filipino workers and the households contracting their services.

“In addition to the ‘scope of duties’ issue that has already attracted controversy, the government also needs to put in place dispute procedures that take into account factors such as how to adjust the matching when emotional issues arise between users and workers,” suggested Korea Labor Institute senior research fellow Cho Hyuk-jin in a telephone interview Wednesday with the Hankyoreh.

“There is the potential for the level of protections for Filipino caregivers to decline when the primary agents for dispute resolution are service organizations with no experience managing foreign care providers in the past,” he warned.

The city of Seoul and the national government have selected Home Story Life and Hubriz to serve as the platforms connecting caregivers with users. 

Observers are stressing that the pilot project should not be used as a basis for differential application of the minimum wage. The city of Seoul originally devised the project to provide child care services at affordable prices, and Mayor Oh Se-hoon has continued to argue the need to employ foreign housekeepers at a pay rate of “1 million won per month” (US$725).

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Employment and Labor are developing detailed plans to enable international residents — including current international students (D-2 visa) and graduates (D-10) as well as marriage migrant family members (F-1-5) and spouses of foreign workers (F-3) — to work as caregivers.

As employees forming direct contracts with households, these housekeepers are not subject to the minimum wage, which raises the possibility that the differential minimum wage application issue will rear its head again during the pilot project with Filipino workers.

Nam Woo-geun, the director of the Korean Contingent Workers’ Center, warned, “Given the nature of care work, there is the risk not only of the migrant workers’ own human rights being violated but also of harm to the children under their care if [the housekeepers] do not have adequate education and linguistic communication abilities to ensure the quality of services.”

“Yet the government is still approaching the caregiving service issue from a purely cost-oriented perspective,” he added.

In connection with this, some observers have suggested referencing the case of Japan — which has a similar economic scale and population to Korea and adopts a “commuter model” in which the minimum wage is applied — rather than the “live-in model” in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, where the minimum wage is not applied.

Another issue is the need for fair and transparent processes to assess the pilot project’s outcomes. Evaluation of the project is to be carried out by the Labor Ministry as a commissioned study, with findings expected to come when the pilot effort ends around February of next year.

But the Korean government announced in June that it plans to bring in 1,200 overseas caregivers during the second half of 2025 through the employment permit system. In effect, it announced an expansion of the project before any problem areas with the pilot effort had even been assessed.

Analysts have also stressed the need to ensure fairness and objectivity by reflecting the positions of the labor world in the evaluation process, rather than only the positions of the government and city.

“Participation by migrant labor human rights groups and labor unions must be ensured in the pilot program process,” urged a coalition of groups advocating for equal treatment for migrant workers in a statement released on Tuesday. 

“In its break-neck race to pull off the domestic work pilot project, the government is refusing to allow any form of participation in education or monitoring,” the coalition criticized. 

By Ki Min-do, staff reporter

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