Vulnerable, low-paid Filipinos have been exploited, tricked and abused under a migrant worker program launched by South Korea to plug its severe labor shortage, an investigation by the Thomson Reuters Foundation has found.
Under the program — which also recruits workers from Nepal, Vietnam, Mongolia, Laos, Cambodia, Uzbekistan and Thailand — farmers and fishers relocate to South Korea for five to eight months of work with the promise of big wages to take home.
But a dozen ex-workers have said the arrangement falls short — many say they returned empty-handed, and some risked losing land to the brokers who sealed their temporary contracts.