Short-term work to be permitted for parents of foreign students
Foreign missions in Korea can now represent workers from their countries who file industrial injury insurance claims.
The Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service said Monday that a related system has been improved to grant foreign missions the right to represent migrant workers free of charge in industrial accident cases.
Previously, only direct family members of migrant workers and certified labor attorneys could represent workers in filing insurance claims.
The restriction had been making the process more expensive for workers and leaving them vulnerable to fraudulent brokering services due to language barriers, which led many of them to forgo the filing altogether.
Allowing foreign missions to represent their workers is expected to help resolve these issues.
The measure came as the massive influx of migrant workers into Korea, which began in the early 1990s due to labor shortages here, has led to an increase in the applications for industrial injury insurance.
According to Statistics Korea, the number of employed foreign nationals in Korea reached a new high of 923,000 in 2023, up 10.7 percent compared to five years ago.
The number of their applications for industrial injury compensation has also increased annually to 9,543 cases in 2023, up 25.9 percent compared to five years ago.
The government anticipates that the number of industrial injury insurance filings by migrant workers will continue to rise, given that many of them work in injury-prone workplaces
The Korean government will operate a pilot program allowing foreign students to invite their parents to Korea to work at farming or fishing villages located in regions close to their schools, the Ministry of Justice said Sunday.
According to the ministry, parents of foreign students who are enrolled in universities outside the greater Seoul area for more than a year, can work as seasonal laborers for up to eight months in the region where their children are studying.
To be qualified for the pilot program, which will last until the end of the year, the parents should be 55 or younger and have no criminal records or health issues. Their children should also have no records of violating Korean laws and there should be more than two semesters left before they apply for the permit.
Foreign students enrolled in university language courses are excluded from the program.
Korea has been running the seasonal worker scheme to allow the such as factories.
In response to the trend, the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service devised, in 2022, plans to make the insurance filing process easier for the workers, including launching helplines and offering relevant education.
This year, the service will deploy counselors to assist the workers better and offer guidance services in their native languages through legal hiring of foreign workers for a short period to address chronic labor shortages during the busy farming and fishing seasons.
So far, the scheme has been available for the relatives of marriage migrants, residents of foreign local governments who have signed related memoranda of understanding with their Korean counterparts or those who have visas allowing seasonal work, such as the D-1, D-2 or D-4.
The government’s decision to extend the program to include the parents of foreign students is based on positive outcomes observed in previous participants, such as relatives of marriage migrants. These individuals exhibited early settlement capabilities and demonstrated a low likelihood of departing from Korea without proper authorization.
“The Ministry of Justice will thoroughly analyze any difficulties during the operation of the pilot projects and improve the system, to assist 131 participating Korean local governments to operate the system smoothly,” a ministry official said. mobile phones.
“We will continue to expand assistance so migrant workers working in unfavorable working environments are not excluded from compensation,” Park Jong-kil, president of the service, said.
Park Jong-pill, a spokesman for the Ministry of Employment and Labor, said, “The latest measure marks significant progress in protecting the human rights of migrant workers.”