Doomed from the start? Why Seoul dropped its foreign caregiver initiative.

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Doomed from the start? Why Seoul dropped its foreign caregiver initiative.

Published: 22 Jan. 2026, 07:00

CHO JUNG-WOO
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Filipino caregivers arrive at Incheon International Airport on Aug. 6, 2024, as part of a government pilot program to recruit foreign caregivers. [NEWS1]

Seoul's attempt to recruit foreign caregivers has been shelved after months of controversy over wages, working conditions and legal protections, exposing deeper questions about whether the country is ready to accept more foreign workers.

The pilot program, launched in August 2024 by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Seoul Metropolitan Government, was intended to ease a growing shortage of child care workers as the country grapples with a persistently low birthrate.

First proposed in 2022 by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, the initiative aimed to lower child care costs and prevent women from leaving the work force by hiring overseas caregivers at relatively affordable rates.

Under the recent plan, 100 caregivers from the Philippines were brought to Seoul and placed in households with children aged 12 and younger.

But the initiative quickly ran into trouble. Service fees proved higher than expected, while concerns mounted over the caregivers’ pay, job scope and legal status. Promoted as a solution to stabilize Korea’s care economy, the program instead revealed a far more fragile arrangement. In December, roughly over a year after its launch, the government announced it would not expand the pilot into a permanent program.

Wages, conditions and an early end

The program faltered almost immediately. Within two weeks of its official launch, two caregivers failed to return to their dormitory, drawing public attention to what critics described as poor preparation and weak oversight.

The two workers were later located in Busan and were ultimately returned to their home country in October 2024.

A Filipino caregiver holds a baby at a household in Seoul on Sept. 3. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

Concerns over working conditions soon followed. During a debate at the Seoul Metropolitan Council in June last year, Lee Mi-ae, a professor at Jeju National University’s Research Institute for Tamla Culture, disclosed testimony from one of the caregivers who had returned home. According to Lee, the worker described an exhausting schedule that began at 8 a.m. and ended when she returned home at midnight.

Despite requesting a shift change, the caregiver received no response from the platform companies, according to an interpreter who shared the case as part of the research.

Pay was another major point of contention. A recent study by Prof. Lee found that caregivers earned roughly half of Korea’s average monthly wage. During the program’s first six months, their average pretax monthly income was 1.92 million won ($1,297). After deductions for housing, insurance and communication fees, take-home pay fell to roughly 1.18 million won.

That amounted to just 51 percent of the national average monthly wage in 2024, which stood at 3.74 million won.

Yet despite relatively low worker pay, households using the service faced comparatively high costs once operational fees charged by private platforms were factored in.

Beginning in March last year, a household using the service for 40 hours paid about 2.92 million won a month, up from roughly 2.43 million won in 2024 when the program kicked off. The increase reflected the application of Korean labor law, including severance pay for employment exceeding one year, as well as platform operating expenses. This year, the hourly cost rose from 16,800 won to 18,900 won.

Critics argued that the scheme delivered little overall benefit, noting that the average monthly cost of hiring domestic caregivers stood at 2.64 million won in 2023.

With criticism mounting and participation failing to expand as planned, the government moved to scale back the initiative. In December last year, it announced that the pilot project would be abolished and that the quota for foreign workers under the E-9 nonprofessional employment visa would be sharply reduced. The annual cap was cut to 80,000 from 130,000 the year before.

Under the E-9 system, workers are initially granted residency for up to three years, with the option to extend their stay by up to one year and 10 months if they remain employed.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, second from right, speaks at a forum on the Filipino caregiver pilot program at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Aug. 27, 2024. [YONHAP]

Employment Ministry officials said caregivers could theoretically remain in Korea for up to 9 years and 8 months through repeated re-entry, though in practice their mobility remains tightly constrained.

As of this year, 83 of the original participants remain in Korea, according to sources. One has since taken a job at a hotel. While E-9 visa holders may change employers under limited circumstances, such as contract termination, they are required to remain within the service sector — the category under which caregiving is classified — a restriction that significantly narrows their employment options.

According to the Employment Ministry, 133 households in Seoul continue to use the service. A survey released in December by the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family found that caregivers rated their overall satisfaction with the program at 3.47 out of 5, lower than the households’ rating of 4.07.

A program built on ambiguity

One caregiver, identified under the pseudonym Lima, said she had signed a contract to provide child care but had never actually cared for a child, according to the study led by Prof. Lee.

Some analysts say the project was flawed from the outset.

Choi Jeong-gyu, an attorney at Wongok Law Firm, pointed to a fundamental discrepancy between how the Korean and Philippine governments defined the program.

“In the memorandum of understanding between the two governments, the term used is ‘caregiver,’” Choi said. “But the Korean government and the Seoul city government consistently referred to them as domestic workers.”

Filipino caregivers arrive at Incheon International Airport on Aug. 6, 2024, as part of a government pilot program to recruit foreign caregivers. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

All Filipino participants had received caregiver certificates after completing at least 780 hours of professional training.

Under the Labor Ministry’s Korean Dictionary of Occupations, caregiving and domestic work are classified as distinct jobs, each with its own occupational code, Choi added.

The memorandum of understanding stated that caregivers were responsible for assisting children, including infants, and pregnant family members with daily activities. They were permitted to perform only “incidental and light” household management tasks for cohabiting family members, with child care defined as their primary responsibility.

In practice, those boundaries were frequently blurred.

A separate 2024 survey found that caregivers spent 64.8 percent of their time on child care, while 30.2 percent was devoted to domestic work. Caregivers reported being asked to clean homes, care for pets and teach English — duties that fell outside their stated job descriptions.

Visa limits, structural weaknesses

Experts say the visa system compounded the program’s vulnerabilities.

“For Koreans, these jobs are often avoided because of poor working conditions,” Prof. Lee said. “For foreign workers, those conditions are compounded by insecurity over residency.”

Phillipines caregiver pilot program [YUN YOUNG]

The caregivers entered Korea on E-9 visas, part of the Employment Permit System. Under the system, workers are unable to choose their workplace freely, face strict limits on changing employers and have their residency status tied directly to continued employment — structural constraints that leave them especially vulnerable in disputes over pay and working conditions.

The program’s administrative structure further weakened worker protections. Responsibility was divided among the central government, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and private platform companies that matched caregivers with households and managed daily operations.

When disputes arose — including cases in which intermediary companies split contracts into multiple parts — officials often said they lacked the authority to intervene, deferring decisions to employers, Prof. Lee noted.

In that vacuum, private platforms had strong incentives to exert tighter control over caregivers. Because the companies profited from keeping the program running, they were more likely to impose strict management rules to ensure operational stability and protect their business model.

Controversy intensified after some platforms introduced rigid controls, including dormitory curfews for caregivers.

In March last year, Seoul and the Employment Ministry formally transferred operational control of the program to private platforms. Currently, most caregivers have moved out of the dormitories and into private housing.

What comes next?

The Seoul city government initially placed high expectations on the program, viewing it as a potential solution to caregiver shortages and a way to help women remain in the work force by providing more child care options. But its future is now uncertain.

“Because visa operations fall under the Employment Ministry, we cannot continue the service independently,” said Lee Bong-jae, cohead of Homesaeng, one of the two private platforms involved.

That constraint, experts say, exposes a deeper structural flaw in how Korea manages migrant care labor.

Protecting migrant workers, they argue, requires coordination across multiple ministries. Residency rights fall under immigration law overseen by the Justice Ministry, while labor visas are governed by separate administrative frameworks — a fragmentation that has left foreign caregivers particularly vulnerable.

At a deeper level, analysts say the shortage of caregivers reflects not only demographic pressures but also the way caregiving labor is valued.

“Korean society’s structural limitations — from qualifications to compensation — were reflected in this scheme,” said Jung Jae-hoon, a professor of social welfare at Seoul Women’s University. He added that the program’s initial refusal to incorporate foreign workers into a universal labor-policy framework made its failure all but inevitable.

Yet even within the domestic labor market, conditions remain unstable despite persistent shortages.

An official at Seoul’s caregiving support center said demand for child care has long exceeded supply, particularly during peak hours between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., forcing many families onto waiting lists.

A Filipino caregiver shares her experience at KT&G Sangsang Planet in Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, on June 17, 2025. [NEWS1]

“Caregivers are paid only for the hours they work,” she said. “If working hours were guaranteed — eight hours a day, for example — the situation could improve.”

Prof. Lee of Jeju National University said Korea could still meet much of its caregiving demand through domestic labor if conditions improved.

“If the labor environment were better, Korean workers could absorb more of the demand,” she said, adding that even if foreign workers are brought in to address an immediate labor shortage, failing to clearly resolve issues related to working conditions and residency rights would inevitably create social problems.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [[email protected]]