Special visa category mulled to bring workers to underpopulated areas

Workers from Thailand arrive at Incheon International Airport last December. [NEWS1]

The government is weighing creating a special type of visa to bring in migrant workers to less-populated areas outside the greater Seoul area amid the worsening labor shortage.

Korea is aging fast with its population declining since 2020, and the situation is especially acute in the provinces outside Seoul.

The median age of residents in Gunwi County in North Gyeongsang was 60.8 in 2020.

Such regions are faced with a serious labor shortage, which has been accelerating since the pandemic outbreak.

To address the issue, the Finance Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Labor Ministry have set up a task force to deal with the population crisis, according to a government source.

Creating a new visa to attract foreign workers in regions with declining populations is currently being discussed as an option. For holders of the new visa, working limitations will be more relaxed than the F-4 visa, which is for foreigners of Korean descent, or the E-9 non-professional employment visa.

The new visa will allow a migrant worker to reside in the region in need of workers for a certain amount of time. The central government would issue an allocated number of visas based on the data submitted by local governments.

“Foreign residents are highly concentrated in the greater Seoul area,” said Lee Kyu-yong, director of the employment policy research division at Korea Labor Institute. “About 80 percent of foreigners of Korean descent are living in the area.”

Lee said that “the foreign workforce should be distributed to the provinces experiencing labor shortages,” adding that “rather than just issuing visas simply based on the administrative districts, matching the necessary workforce with local industrial complexes would be more appropriate.”

The general requirements for visa issuance will be relaxed for professionals in certain businesses, such as shipbuilding.

Shipbuilding has been hard hit by the worker shortage. Though the business was booming with the number of orders hitting a record high last year, those who subscribed to unemployment insurance in the industry dropped from 170,000 in 2016 to the 90,000 level this year.

The wage system will be revised as well to lessen costs for small companies.

Under the current system, E-7 professional employment visa holders have to be paid at least 80 percent of Korea’s gross national income (GNI) per capita. The restriction is in place to prevent migrant workers from being underpaid, but as the figure reached 40.5 million won ($31,000) a year in 2021, local workers could be paid less than their overseas counterparts in some of the small companies.

Small companies are experiencing serious labor shortages. A survey by the Labor Ministry in the second half of last year found that small and mid-sized companies were short 322,000 workers.

Korea is faced with a population crisis. Statistics Korea projects that Korea’s population will shrink from 51.8 million in 2020 to 37.7 million in 2070. The working population will drop to 17 million from the current 37 million.

“If there are enough Koreans, there is no reason to bring in more migrant workers, but we have no other options at this point,” said Nho Yong-jin, a business professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology.

“The small- and mid-sized companies, which are experiencing a serious worker shortage problem, are in need of support workers, and the migrant workers need to do more than just simple labor there,” said Nho. “We cannot blindly bring as many foreigners as possible, but we need to consider increasing personnel now.”

BY JEONG JIN-HO [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]