CINA

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1. Impressions from MTU's latest "Candle-light Culture Festival" against the ongoing crackdown campaign on migrant workers in the name of the next G-20 Summit, staged last Friday(8.13) in front of Myeong-dong Cathedral in downtown Seoul:

For more please check out:

http://migrant.nodong.net/?document_srl=34936#0

2. Today's report in Korea Times:

Migrant workers suffer abuses

Six years have passed since the government opened the labor market wider to foreigners by adopting the Employment Permit System (EPS) with more than 164,000 foreigners working in Korea under the program.

But there are still few signs of progress when it comes to their welfare in the workplaces, a survey showed, Tuesday, with migrant workers’ human rights remaining largely ignored.

According to a survey of the Asan Migrant Workers’ Center to mark the 6th anniversary, nearly 40 percent of migrant workers in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, have suffered physical and verbal abuse at work.

More than 70 percent of them found their actual working conditions inferior to the contract terms they had signed. One fourth said they had not received medical checkups on an annual basis, which is illegal.

More than 30 percent said their passports, bank account details and other private goods were being kept by Korean employers, a measure to keep them from running away.

Thirty-three percent of the surveyed said they sleep in steel containers or conference rooms despite paying to move in to a company-associated residential facility...

Last October, Amnesty International urged Seoul to set tighter measures to guarantee better working conditions for migrants.

The human rights watchdog reported that many migrant workers in Korea are abused, trafficked for sexual exploitation or denied wages despite the introduction of rules for their protection.

Amnesty added these workers often have to operate heavy machinery or work with dangerous chemicals with little or no training or protective equipment, and suffer a disproportionate number of industrial accidents...

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/08/113_71580.html

Somehow related article:
☞ Korea to open middle schools to illegal immigrants (K. Herald, 8.17)