The Jeongeup City Hall in Jeongeup, North JeollaJEONGEUP CITY GOVERNMENT
North Jeolla's Jeongeup came under fire after the city was accused of keeping seasonal workers' passports for extended periods, returning them only shortly before their departure or after a migrant rights group demanded their return.
Migrant rights group 1218ForAll claimed Tuesday that Jeongeup had been holding the passports of seasonal workers who entered Korea over the past two years and returned them only on the day they were due to leave the country.
The rights group said it visited the city officials on Friday to demand that the passports be returned, and that the city later handed them back.
The passports of around 160 seasonal workers were collected by the city according to the group, which said the practice could constitute violations of the Immigration Act and the Labor Standards Act. It also argued that the case warrants a human rights review by the Ministry of Justice.
Jeongeup disputed the rights group's account.
A city official said the passports had been collected to carry out administrative procedures related to the workers' stays in Korea. The official acknowledged that their return had been delayed but said the city had held passports belonging to 59 workers, not about 160.
The city also said the workers had not been coerced into handing over their passports. It attributed the delay in returning the passports to a shortage of staff handling the seasonal worker program, which slowed administrative processing.
Jeongeup stressed that it had not held the passports to prevent seasonal workers from leaving their workplaces or to infringe on their rights.
Seasonal workers tend to strawberry seedlings at a farm in South Gyeongsang on July 30, in this photo unrelated to the article.NEWS1
The rights group, however, rejected the city's explanation.
A 1218ForAll representative claimed that during their visit, a Jeongeup official had said the passports were being held to "prevent workers from leaving their assigned workplaces." The group said that this contradicted the city's claim that the prolonged retention resulted simply from administrative delays.
“This case reflects a structural problem in which human and labor rights have been neglected by the government,” the North Jeolla Migrant Human Rights and Labor Network said in a statement. “A comprehensive investigation involving an independent outside body should be conducted into all local governments in North Jeolla.”
The provincial government sent an official notice to all cities and counties in the region after learning of the case, and instructed them to check for similar practices and take necessary measures.
North Jeolla also plans to interview seasonal workers during future on-site inspections to prevent similar cases from recurring, a provincial government official said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
