Migrants are not commodities

Won Ok-kum

The author is a representative of the Migrant Center Donghaeng and is originally from Vietnam. 

Spring seems to have arrived in Korea a little earlier than the calendar suggests. Yet the news I hear still feels as cold as a midwinter wind. Recently a local government leader in South Jeolla Province used the phrase “importing foreign virgins” as a supposed solution to population decline. The word “import” made me question what I had just heard. It is a term used for manufactured goods or agricultural products. How could such a word appear so casually in a public discussion about human lives?

Hearing that remark, I began to wonder whether Korea’s self-perception is misleading. For decades society has said it is learning to accept migrants and live together with them. Yet the underlying mindset may still be trapped in a utilitarian view of people. To say that people are imported means defining them not as individuals with dignity and stories of their own but as objects that satisfy someone else’s needs.

The local leader’s words revealed a discriminatory assumption: Migrants exist primarily as supplements for what Korea lacks. Unfortunately this view does not appear only in isolated remarks. It also surfaces in policy debates now taking place in government and society. One example is the discussion about restricting migrant workers from changing workplaces.

It is true that Korea’s economy is struggling in some sectors and that rural communities are losing population. Migrant workers are needed in many industries. But if they are acknowledged as necessary workers, why are their rights placed within a framework of restriction?

Whenever I hear proposals to limit workplace changes to once every one or two years, I want to ask a simple question. If you were subjected to unfair treatment or violations of your rights, could you quietly endure until the required time passed? A life bound to a single workplace simply because a deadline has not expired is difficult to distinguish from forced labor.

Restricting the freedom to change workplaces will not save small- and medium-sized businesses. Productivity grows when workers can choose their workplaces and when labor conditions are respected. Trust in Korean society also grows under those conditions. The current system does not truly protect migrant workers. Instead it risks turning outdated habits of controlling labor into law.

How long will Korea continue to see migrants mainly as people to manage? As a migrant activist, I meet many migrant neighbors. They help sustain the country’s food supply, work on construction sites and fill important gaps in society. Before they are foreigners who came to earn money, they are people who laugh, cry and dream about the future just like everyone else.

They are not commodities brought in from abroad. They are people living through the same era alongside us.

What, then, should be done? The first step is to change the language of policy. Words such as “import,” “management” and “control” should give way to terms like coexistence, welcome and citizenship. Local governments should stop seeing migrants only as statistics in population reports. Instead they should build the infrastructure that allows migrants to take root as members of local communities.

Migrant workers should also be fully guaranteed the freedom to change workplaces so that their rights can be protected. Who would want to remain in a place where dignity is not respected? People begin to see a place as home only when they are treated with respect.

Korea often says it has entered a multicultural era. The time has come to establish standards of human dignity that match that reality. Viewing migrants merely as tools will eventually turn into violence against other members of society as well.

Even if it is difficult now, society must begin practicing the habit of calling one another neighbors. The label of “foreigner” should not overshadow the person behind it. Each migrant should be recognized as a worker, a neighbor and an individual with a name.

Spring has already arrived. If outdated and discriminatory attitudes are set aside, the future Korea builds together with migrants could be warmer and richer than the present. Migrant neighbors are not objects. They are people who dream of the same future.

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.