New immigration policies needed as Korea turns truly multicultural [AGENDA 2024]

Social Affairs

Published: 28 Apr. 2024, 18:54 Updated: 29 Apr. 2024, 13:33

New immigration policies needed as Korea turns truly multicultural [AGENDA 2024]

Foreign workers assemble machine parts at Korean motor company GNTECH's factory in Danwon District in Ansan, Gyeonggi, on March 6. [PARK SANG-MOON]

For a business owner in Korea, foreign workers are essential to keep his factory going.

At a motor factory nestled in the Banwol industrial complex of Ansan, Gyeonggi, six Vietnamese workers — who all came to Korea for employment — were diligently assembling motor parts when the Korea JoongAng Daily visited last month.

For would-be immigrants to Korea, reality often falls short of rhetoric [AGENDA 2024]

“We have no choice but to hire foreign workers to maintain our business,” You Young-cheol, CEO of Ansan-based motor company GNTECH, said in an interview with the newspaper at his office in the city’s Danwon District.

The company manufactures motors and parts used in vehicles and machines.

Ansan, home to the Banwol and Sihwa industrial complexes, is an industrial city known to have the highest density of foreign residents in the country. Nearly 13 percent of Ansan’s residents are foreigners, well above the average of around 4 percent of the total population of Korea in other parts of the country.

The influx of migrant workers to Ansan traces back to the development of the Banwol Industrial Complex in the 1970s. In 2009, the city was designated as a Multicultural Village Special Zone. Now, some 96,000 foreign residents from 114 countries live in the city, which has a total population of around 679,000.

In particular, Danwon, with over 68,000 foreigners, is the district with the highest number of foreign residents in the country, according to the Justice Ministry’s data released on March 11.

As a hub for factories for small businesses, Ansan has had a head start in assimilating foreigners into the area, providing city-run support centers and multicultural classrooms. The diverse city has also positioned itself as an ideal location for a new immigration agency that is in the works.

Ansan's case provides a potential vision for an era when Korea becomes a truly multicultural country.

However, Korea, striving to become a multicultural developed country, still struggles with formulating a comprehensive immigration policy that caters to both Korean needs and immigrants' integration aspirations.

Running out of time

A change in Korea’s immigration policy is no longer just an option but a necessity, as the country is facing a serious existential threat due to its aging population and declining birthrates.

As Korea’s population declines, meaning a drop in its workforce in the coming decades, embracing more immigrants could be essential for the country's survival and continued economic growth.

For every 1 percent decrease in the working-age population, the GDP is anticipated to plummet by approximately 0.59 percent, meaning the country’s GDP could shrink drastically to one of the smallest economies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) by 2050.

Korea has seen its population decline since 2020. Last year's population stood at 51.32 million, a 0.22 percent drop from the previous year.

The working-age population, or people aged 15 to 64, declined 0.96 percent from a year ago to about 35.9 million in 2023, accounting for 70 percent of the total number of registered residents.

In turn, Korea has surpassed the era of 2.5 million foreigners and is fast approaching the era of 3 million foreigners.

According to the Ministry of Justice, as of December 2023, the number of foreigners residing in Korea for short or long-term stays was 2,507,584, or 4.89 percent of the total population of over 51 million.

This is an increase of 11.7 percent from the previous year. The number of foreigners residing in the country exceeded 2 million in 2016 and 2.52 million in 2019, then slowed down during the Covid-19 pandemic but is on the rise again from 2022.

The OECD considers a country to be multicultural if the proportion of foreigners exceeds 5 percent of the population, meaning Korea is on track to enter an era of becoming an internationally recognized multicultural country.

According to GNTECH CEO You, around 20 percent of his factory's workforce — six out of roughly 30 employees — are comprised of individuals who have migrated to Korea with work visas. You stressed that hiring a foreign worker has never been easy in the 25 years he has run the company.

"People think we hire foreign nationals at factories for a cheaper cost, but it’s the opposite," You said.

Employing foreign workers incurs additional expenses, including protracted hiring procedures and maintenance costs such as providing dormitories. Nevertheless, You’s company has consistently opted to rely on foreign labor for its factory operations.

You highlighted that bringing prospective employees to the country takes months, with companies restricted to specific time periods for applying for foreign manpower through the immigration office.

The company must initially advertise job opportunities for Korean nationals for two weeks. It can proceed to apply for foreign workers through related agencies only after it provides evidence that it was unsuccessful in recruiting Korean nationals.

In recent years, factories in the area have increasingly turned to foreign labor amid labor shortages stemming from the country’s dismally low birthrate and aversion to manufacturing jobs among young Koreans.

“It may become more difficult to find skilled Korean workers across industries due to low wages, long working hours and low birthrates,” said Kim Sung-hee, a professor at Korea University Graduate School of Labor Studies.

Labor shortages in certain industries “may also result from the lack of potential workforce in itself, but it depends more on what kind of jobs people decide to take,” Kim said.

“People nowadays, including young and old, are more selective in their job selection, considering multiple factors such as if the work is helpful for their future or less tiring.”

Echoing this sentiment, You emphasized the inevitability of recruiting more foreign workers on work visas, as many young Koreans opt out of factory jobs.

Hai, a Vietnamese worker at Korean motor company GNTECH, assembles automobile parts at a factory in Danwon District, Ansan, on March 6. [PARK SANG-MOON]

New strides

The Yoon Suk Yeol government has been taking significant strides in immigration policies that will allow for an unprecedented level of foreigners to work in Korea. It is also working on measures to better assimilate foreigners into Korean society.

In June 2023, President Yoon ordered the government to explore ways to integrate and manage foreign workers, addressing labor shortages.

Last year, the Justice Ministry’s annual issuance of the E-7-4 visa for highly skilled foreign personnel leapt from a quota of just 2,000 to 35,000.

Holders of the E-9 non-professional worker visa can qualify for the E-7-4 if they meet certain requirements. Those who meet requirements like living in Korea for over five years and earning a certain income level can gradually acquire the F-2 long-term residency or F-5 permanent residency visa.

“The impact of enabling simply skilled workers to reside in the country as professional workers could be extremely big,” legal and immigration expert Han Tae-hee, adjunct professor of Multiculture and Korean Language at Konyang Cyber University, said.

“Currently, low-income foreign workers can’t invite their families or become permanent residents. But if 35,000 people can obtain E-7 visas, they can invite their families back home and eventually receive permanent residency in Korea.”

He noted that if the policy goes accordingly, “We will in the future be able to see a lot of families made up entirely of foreigners walking around on the streets.”

There were 51,000 foreigners naturalized between January 2018 and May 2023 and living in Korea as of last May, according to government statistics. Among them, Vietnamese accounted for 41 percent with 21,000, followed by ethnic Koreans from China at 17,000, Chinese at 6,000, those from other Asian countries at 7,000 and non-Asians comprising 1,000.

Of the 2.5 million foreigners residing in Korea last year, by nationality, Chinese were the highest number at 942,395, followed by Vietnamese at 271,712, Thais at 202,121, Americans at 161,895 and Uzbekistanis at 87,698.

Hai, 30, is Vietnamese and has been living in Korea since 2019. He came under an E-9 visa and began working at You’s company. His journey to Korea commenced only after completing a Korean language program and securing his visa. He was also offered an extra year to stay in Korea to work due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having had his visa extended after returning to his home country, Hai hopes to reapply in the future to work longer in Korea.

E-9 visas, offered for non-professional jobs like manufacturing and construction, grant three years of stay in the country. The visa, eligible for workers coming from 16 countries like Vietnam and Thailand, can be extended by a year and 10 months, allowing workers to stay up to four years and 10 months. Workers would need to go back to their home countries to reapply for the visa and come to Korea again under the same visa.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor announced improvements in the visa scheme to save the hassle of workers going back to their countries for reentries. The ministry said last year it is pushing for a policy revision to allow workers to work and stay in Korea for over 10 years under E-9 visas.

The Korean government announced last November that it plans to bring in a record 165,000 non-professional migrant workers this year under the Employment Permit System.

It also expanded the scope of industries where foreign workers on an E-9 non-professional employment visa can work, including restaurants, mining and forestry sectors. Korean-Chinese and international students were the only foreigners allowed to work in restaurants until now.

The E-9 nonskilled worker visa quotas have been on the rise, nearly doubling from around 59,000 to 110,000 in 2023 and yet again to 165,000 this year, in an acknowledgment of the difficulties Korea has in finding a workforce in certain industries among young Koreans.

Despite the amendment in immigration policies, however, experts point out that Korea as a society needs to be better prepared to embrace such an influx of immigrants.

“If we simply rapidly increase the number of foreign workers and industries, there are bound to be side effects,” said Prof. Kim of the Korea University Graduate School of Labor Studies. “Long-term policies are needed, such as improving the system to encourage foreign workers to build skills and work in Korea for a long time.”

Businesses also say that there should be more benefits for foreign workers to incentivize them to work in Korea.

“Those who work at a company for a long period should be given more benefits,” You said, recalling his experience a decade ago when he went to Indonesia in person to persuade the Korean embassy in Jakarta to grant a visa for a well-trained worker who had been employed in his factory for years.

The company ultimately failed to bring the former employee back.

Launching an immigration agency

All six foreign workers at You’s factory arrived in the country under E-9 visas.

GNTECH applied again for foreign employees last year, expecting four more workers from Vietnam this summer.

The company gained approvals from related agencies in February, but it would still take months for the employees to be physically at the factory.

July is the ideal month for them to start working, as long as no other administrative issues get in the way. Until the new workers arrive in the summer, the company is filling in the void with outsourced personnel.

A Chinese worker employed by an outsourcing company aligns motors at a factory in Ansan's Danwon District, Gyeonggi, on March 6. [PARK SANG-MOON]

"Many people are willing to come and work here, but as we need to go through multiple agencies and authorities, it takes months to hire them," You said.

On Feb. 2, the governing People Power Party (PPP) proposed a revision bill calling for the establishment of an independent government agency under the justice minister to handle immigration affairs.

Currently, the government's response to foreigners and immigration is split between various ministries, leading to a lack of a watchdog enabling a comprehensive and systemic process. The Ministry of Justice is in charge of cracking down on illegal immigrants, the Ministry of Employment and Labor is in charge of foreign labor management, and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is in charge of supporting multicultural families. At the same time, local governments have formulated their own policies and measures to help immigrants settle in their regions.

In turn, Korea has been pushing for a comprehensive immigration agency under the Justice Ministry to systematically oversee immigration and foreigner policies.

The establishment of a comprehensive immigration agency may be good news for companies that go through a lengthy process to hire overseas workers, contacting multiple organizations for administrative work.

The city of Ansan is one of the cities vying to headquarter the new immigration agency.

"Ansan's policy for foreigners and experience will be beneficial in operating an immigration agency in the city," Ansan Mayor Lee Min-geun said last November as he submitted a proposal to host the headquarters in his city to then Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon.

However, labor experts are worried that a new immigration agency will only be a slight upgrade from the Justice Ministry’s Korea Immigration Service, without providing the much-needed integration and oversight of immigration policies.

Prof. Han said that an immigration agency under the Justice Ministry may not be sufficient to provide the full comprehensive support that Korea’s immigration policy and management require. He said it makes sense for the prime minister’s office or the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to oversee such an agency.

Han pointed to other advanced countries’ immigration agencies, including Britain and New Zealand, which are usually located under their country’s equivalent of an Interior Ministry or Public Administration Ministry. The exceptions are Japan and the Philippines, which have immigration services within the Ministry of Justice.

Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency, formed in 2007 to handle immigration and border control, is located under its Ministry of Interior and is one of the examples Korea frequently cites.

Even Japan, a country known for being similar to Korea in its homogeneity, has also been rolling out policies that embrace foreign immigrants more. These include granting permanent residency status to highly skilled foreigners in 2018, recruiting more unskilled workers, and, more recently, introducing a six-month residency visa for digital nomads.

Prof. Kim also underscored that an independent agency for immigration is needed and would be helpful for overseeing immigration measures as a whole. However, he stressed that the agency should be established with an exact purpose and direction set for the institution.

"The establishment of a new immigration agency should follow the general direction of policies with a set purpose," he said.

“Fundamentally, we have to change the way we look at foreigners and shift the paradigm so that we no longer view foreigners as subjects of immigration control but as our neighbors and as residents living with us, allowing for social integration,” Han said.

Despite the challenging process of getting a work visa in Korea, 26-year-old Lei, a Vietnamese who came to Ansan three years ago for employment, said he hopes to continue working in the country as long as possible. He decided to work in Korea after traveling to the country with his friend.

“After coming to Korea, I have worked in different environments and with different people," he said. "My experience was good enough for me to recommend my friends to come and work here.”

Agenda 2024 Immigration Crisis Part 2

Korea faces an existential crisis with the lowest birthrate in the world and a rapidly aging population. As the country braces for the reality of a shrinking workforce — which could deal a sharp blow to its economic growth in the near future — alternative solutions grow more urgent, including embracing more immigration. The question remains: Is Korea ready? The Korea JoongAng Daily will examine the difficulties faced by foreigners wishing to work here as the government, experts, civic groups and the public mull the need for more comprehensive immigration policies so that the country becomes truly multicultural.

BY SARAH KIM AND CHO JUNG-WOO [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr, cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]