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Presentation of opinions for improvement of human rights of alien workers residing in Korea [2002] KRNHRC 9 (1 November 2002)

The Commission expressed its opinion on the `measures to improve the alien
manpower system' on August 12, 2002. In November 2002, the government
announced the `measures to supplement the alien manpower system,' but these
measures hardly satisfied the recommendations of the Commission. The `survey
on conditions for alien workers residing in Korea' revealed that alien workers
still suffer long working hours, low wages, poor working environments, delays
in payments, and industrial disasters.

To address the problem, the Commission recommended to the Speaker of the
National Assembly that the pending `Bill on Work Permits and Human Rights
Protection of Alien Workers' be supplemented and legislated at the earliest
possible date in order to introduce work permits, under which wages and
working conditions of alien workers could be raised to match those of Korean
workers. To this end, the Commission made recommendations as follows:

In order to protect human rights during crackdowns on illegal alien workers,
the law should be applied equally as for Korean nationals. In cases where the
workers are detained and taken to police stations, the authorities must disclose
the locations to which they are being taken and grant them the opportunity to
make phone calls to inform their families and friends of their situation.

Clause 1, Article 84 of the Immigration Control Act should be amended to
allow for relief applications by alien workers and the education of their children.
As industrial trainees who entered Korea under the Industrial Training
System are actually employed, they are not recognized as workers.
As a result, both industrial trainees and unregistered illegal alien workers are pressed to
work long hours; their wages are withheld; and their passports are seized.
Thus, the Industrial Trainee System should be abolished.
The reason for the vast number of illegal alien workers is the extremely high
cost of the immigration process. To reduce immigration costs, the agency for
receiving and deporting alien workers should be integrated into a government
agency so that irregularities in handling alien workers on their arrival and
departure can be eradicated at the source, thereby removing the major cause of
illegal alien status.

Since an increasing number of women are entering Korea with "art and
entertainment" (E 6) visas, and many of those women have not only become
involved in the nation's sex industry but also have become victims of sexual
assault, the E 6 visa system must be re examined and the Immigration Office
must take steps to ensure that these visas are issued according to their original
intent. The basic guidebooks on the immigration process and immigrant
workers' rights are translated in more than 10 different languages and should
be published and made readily available.

After the recommendation of the Commission was issued, the `Foreign
Workers Employment Act' was legislated and the Work Permit System was
introduced. Most of the recommendations, except that on the Industrial Trainee
System, were accepted.