CINA

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Today, 15 years ago, we - Myeong-dong Sit-in Struggle Collective(MSSC) - published the following report:

On the same day the bourgeois Korea Herald published the following feature:

Migrant workers demand work visas

 
Over 100 people stage sit-in for 41 days to protest deportation

Christmas Day, an appointed time for giving and caring, has come and gone for Sohana. It was like the 40 previous days, her plea from a makeshift camp in the center of Seoul went unheeded. 

The plight of the 32-year-old Indonesian woman is similar to more than 100 other men and women around her. All are illegal migrant workers. All of them are protesting against the government's labor policy. All of them are demanding employment visas. 

As the days have become shorter and nights colder, the group has huddled in four makeshift camps near Myeongdong Cathedral. 

"It is so cold that people in sleep fumble to draw any inch-larger patch of blanket near them. In these four makeshift camps, 100 people live and sleep," says Sohana, who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name. 

She is one of six female migrants participating in the Myeongdong struggle. She entered Korea on industrial-trainee visa in 1997. 

"Preparing meals and washing dishes are all done on the street. When I began the sit-in on Nov. 15, I was expecting some improvements at least by Christmas. But during the past 40 days of life in the tent, nothing has changed. No answers from the Korean government. No help from our embassy. Nobody cares," she told The Korea Herald. 

An estimated 110,000 illegal migrant workers are expected to be forced out of the nation as those with longer than four years of stay were excluded in the legalization ended Oct. 31. 

The Korean government began a roundup and deportation of illegal foreign workers the next month and about 2,450 people were caught as of Dec. 21. Some 700 are kept under detention and 1,823 have been deported to their native lands, according to figures by the Ministry of Justice. 

The legalization and the subsequent crackdown were part of government moves to clear the decks ahead of the implementation of the new work-permit system next August. 

An estimated 2,500 foreign workers are protesting in groups throughout the nation against the government crackdown and new foreign labor system. Civic and religious communities are helping many of them. 

"Those who are neither joined in struggle nor caught by the police should be hiding in countryside or city slums," said Chin Je-hyeon, a Korean volunteer for migrant workers. 

"The government has no idea what is going to happen when these cornered people are further driven at bay," she said. 

Before the passage of the foreign work-permit scheme in the National Assembly last August, the Korean government had used cheap foreign labor under the industrial-trainee system. 

Human rights activists said the system virtually left foreign workers exposed to serious labor abuse and exploitation. Migrants were deprived of basic labor rights because their legal status was little more than trainee, they said. 

Many trainees ran away from their designated workplaces, becoming illegal residents. Others came to Korea on tourist visas and refused to leave the nation. 

Early this year, 227,000 foreign workers, or nearly 80 percent of the total foreign labor, were estimated to be illegal residents. 

More than half of them were from China. People from Vietnam, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia made up for another 25 percent, according to labor ministry figures. 

Government officials say the new foreign work-permit system is designed to ensure better labor conditions for migrant workers by granting them the basic labor rights such as to organize trade unions and collective actions. 

"The work-permit system is as disastrous as the previous trainee system," said Jahid, 29, from Bangladesh. 

"The new scheme, just like the old one, prohibits migrant workers from changing worksites more than three times during their three years of permitted stay in Korea. As long as we are not allowed to change jobs more freely, we cannot claim anything, no union either, for fear of dismissal," he said. 

"Politicians and government officials never listened to our demands. Eventually, the work-permit system is another tool to control us," he said. 

However, the labor and justice ministries have vowed to continue supervision and crackdown until the rate of illegal foreign labor out of the total migrant work force falls below 10 percent. 

"If foreign workers are allowed to shift jobs, they will leave their designated manufacturing worksites for higher wage offers. It will eventually raise domestic pay levels, leaving manufacturing worksites hollowed again," said Jung Eon-kee, an official at the foreign labor division in the Ministry of Labor. 

"After all, they would likely attempt to overstay their visas, falling to be illegal again," he said. 

"When the Korean football team took the field in 2002 World Cup, Koreans said their country was the 'Pride of Asia.' Look at these people. Can you still say that?" asks Mahabub, 29, in the Myeongdong protest group.