Original article in Korean is at this link.

On the 16th, the National Human Rights Commission recommended that the Ministry of Employment and Labor initiate reforms to the process of renewing the employment permits of foreign workers because the process is too complicated and leads many to stay illegally.

The current employment permit system grants stays of three years, extendable to four years and ten months, after which a foreign worker must return to his home country and obtain employment, receive training, or take the Korean Proficiency Test, and six months afterwards may take new employment. Because of this many of them stay in the country as unregistered workers, and so the process must be simplified, the Commission argues.

The Commission said: “In the next year over 100,000 workers’ permits will expire and about 40,000 of them will continue to stay in the country… As the number of illegal immigrants increases so does the likelihood of human rights abuses.”

According to the Commission, in September there were 1.42 million resident foreigners, of whom over 490,000 were on employment permits.

The Commission also recommended lifting restrictions on the grounds and number of times that a foreign worker may change workplaces. Foreign workers may have up to three separate workplaces in a three-year span. The Commission believes that “change should be permitted without regard to cause or number of times.”

The Commission said that reforms to the social insurance systems are needed to ensure that foreign workers receive correct salaries and severance pay. The Commission recommended: “Foreign workers have difficulty confirming whether they have been registered with the insurance systems… Related information should be available in all languages, and the system of insurance registration should be simplified.”