Seasonal foreign workers leave during busy season

Around 1:50 p.m. on Tuesday with a sensory temperature of 38 degrees Celsius, I reached Hajang-myeon, Samcheok located 800 meters above sea level after driving 50 minutes from downtown Samcheok in Gangwon Province. On both sides of the winding mountain road, there were high-altitude cabbage patches. Foreign workers were working in the patches wearing wide-brimmed hats. In a field of red pepper next to it, Filipino workers named Ring, Marji, and Merygold were categorizing the quality of peppers based on their quality and moving them to the second screening station.

The three workers came to South Korea through the seasonal foreign worker system, which hires short-term foreign workers during the busy season in summer. August is the busiest season for peppers. Farms that struggle to hire South Korean workers hire seasonal foreign workers. “Two out of nine foreign workers hired this year ran away without saying anything,” said farmer Ham Jeong-hee who hired seasonal foreign workers. Another farmer named Lee Dong-yeol also complained that four out of nine workers left. While the number of foreign workers hired rose significantly thanks to the seasonal foreign worker system introduced in 2015, there are growing side effects, such as running away without notice. Farms are facing an emergency as many foreign workers suddenly left before the harvest season in September. Response measures should be implemented as public security issues can arise if foreign workers who ran away illegally stay in the country.

According to the analysis by a private think-tank, Fiscal Reform Institute, of data received by Hong Young-pyo, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea and a member of the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee, from local governments, the number of seasonal foreign workers sharply increased from 1,085 in 2017 to 12,027 in 2022. During the same period, the number of workers who ran away also increased from 18 to 1,151. Sixteen out of 109 seasonal foreign workers disappeared without saying anything from the beginning of this year until August, which is the busy season, in Samcheok and 19 of them left the country saying that they don’t wish to continue. This means 32 percent of the total, or 35 workers, left. Goheung Police Station in South Jeolla Province reported on Sunday that 14 out of 15 foreign workers who were working at a local seaweed processing plant disappeared last year.


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