Problems continue to emerge involving Korea’s foreign seasonal worker program, whose participants are employed mainly in agriculture. Seasonal workers endure the summer heat while working at an orchard in Bonghwang-myeon, Naju, South Jeolla, on the morning of July 27, as heat wave advisories remained in effect across the Gwangju-South Jeolla region.YONHAP
Won Ok-kum
The author is a representative of the Migrant Center Donghaeng and is originally from Vietnam.
Around this time last year, I wrote in this column about problems with the seasonal worker program and the involvement of brokers. I argued that local governments should establish a system under which they take direct responsibility for managing the program. A year later, little has changed on the ground. If anything, more serious abuses are emerging.
On Sept. 28, the Joint Committee with Migrants in Korea held a news conference with a Filipino worker outside the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and filed a petition over allegations involving seasonal workers in Jeongeup, North Jeolla. These included passport confiscation, false reports that workers had absconded and authorities' alleged tolerance of intermediary exploitation. I attended the news conference and criticized Jeongeup's conduct.
At the event, I called the allegations shocking and shameful, because a local government entrusted with protecting seasonal workers appeared instead to have participated in practices that restricted their freedom and left them more vulnerable to brokers and employers it should closely oversee.
The Jeongeup case illustrates how serious the structural problems have become. Allegations that the city kept workers' passports for extended periods to prevent them from leaving and falsely reported a worker as having absconded despite knowing the worker's whereabouts cannot be taken lightly. If investigations confirm illegal acts such as broker exploitation, or show that local authorities knowingly tolerated or facilitated them, those responsible must face thorough investigation and legal accountability. Effective sanctions, including suspending allocations of seasonal workers, should follow according to the severity of violations and responsibility involved. Rural labor shortages can never justify violating workers' human rights.
The seasonal worker program was introduced to address labor shortages in rural communities. Yet as it expanded, adequate safeguards for workers' rights and human dignity failed to keep pace. The focus remained on how many workers could be brought in. As a result, wage exploitation, passport confiscation, illegal demands for money and threats involving workplace transfers have repeatedly surfaced. Korea must now move beyond responding to individual cases and change how the program itself operates.
First, primary responsibility for the seasonal worker program should be transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Employment and Labor. Seasonal workers enter Korea on visas, but once here, they live as workers dealing with wages, working hours, industrial accidents and workplace transfers. A Justice Ministry-led system focused on visas and worker quotas is poorly equipped to prevent rights violations at workplaces.
The Justice Ministry should remain responsible for immigration control, while the Labor Ministry, with its expertise, should oversee labor supply, workplace inspections and human rights protections.
Second, the opaque recruitment structure delegated to local governments should be replaced by a public system. The current practice, under which individual Korean municipalities sign agreements directly with overseas local governments and recruit workers, creates blind spots where illegal brokers can intervene, particularly when municipalities lack capacity and expertise.
The central government should take direct responsibility and transparently manage recruitment procedures and costs. Existing infrastructure at public institutions such as the Human Resources Development Service of Korea could be used to oversee the entire process, from recruitment and entry to placement and return home. A national public management system should also clearly disclose in advance all costs imposed on workers and the terms of their contracts.
Third, basic labor rights must be guaranteed and workplace oversight strengthened. Seasonal workers are workers employed in Korea. They are entitled to the minimum wage, weekly holiday pay and proper rest periods, as well as appropriate treatment and compensation when injured at work.
Above all, authorities must eradicate practices that use visa extensions, immigration status or prospects for re-entry as leverage to intimidate workers. They must also thoroughly investigate the forcible seizure of passports or identification documents and demands for money in exchange for allowing workplace transfers. An independent counseling and reporting system is needed so workers do not face retaliation for reporting abuse.
The purpose of the seasonal worker program is to ease rural labor shortages. But that objective cannot take precedence over workers' rights. If seasonal workers are viewed merely as labor to be brought in when needed, used and sent home, the same abuses will continue.
The Justice Ministry, Labor Ministry and local governments must stop shifting responsibility and confront the program's structural flaws. The first question should no longer be how many workers to allocate, but under what conditions those workers are actually working.
If a program intended to sustain rural communities instead tramples on the human rights of the workers brought in to support them, that program must change. Fundamental redesign of the seasonal worker system and the establishment of an accountable management structure can no longer be postponed.
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.
