Regulations, bans drive away potential immigrants

Potential immigrants are shunning Korea due to its strict entry requirements. Instead, they are turning their eyes to countries like Japan.

Students at VXT, an agency that helps people with overseas employment, take a rest on a street in Hanoi after class on June 18. [LEE YOUNG-KEUN]

Potential immigrants are shunning Korea due to its strict entry requirements.

Instead, they are turning their eyes to countries like Japan.

“Korea requires a lot of paperwork to get a visa and the cost of sending students overseas is high,” the CEO of VXT, a Vietnamese agency that helps people go overseas to work or study, told the JoongAng Ilbo, this paper’s affiliate.

“It is much easier to send [them] to Europe.”

VXT has five branches in Vietnam, three of which educate applicants who wish to go overseas.

It educates 2,400 to 3,000 people a year to send to foreign countries, mostly Japan and Taiwan.

Vietnamese were the second-largest group of foreigners living in Korea last year behind Chinese, according to Justice Ministry data.

However, Vietnamese preferred moving to Japan followed by the United States, Taiwan, Germany and France, according to a survey by the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Though Korea led the same survey just six months ago, the country failed to make the top 10 this time around.

A total of 5,800 Vietnamese between the ages of 17 and 40 who live in major migrant-producing regions such as Ha Thin, Nghe An and Quang Binh responded to the survey.

Migrant workers' interest in Korea has plunged despite a rising number of young Vietnamese moving overseas.

According to the UN, 37,923 Vietnamese moved abroad to work in the first quarter of this year, an all-time high.

The figure rose 17 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

The plunge in Korea’s popularity is blamed on strict immigration requirements.

Vietnamese nationals practice welding in a class at VXT in Hanoi. [LEE YOUNG-KEUN]

The Korean government and Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs drew up measures in 2016 to reduce the number of immigrants staying in the country illegally.

The measures ban regions in Vietnam from sending workers to Korea if more than 60 of the workers they previously sent fail to return after their visas expired, or if more than 30 percent of the workers they sent have entered the country illegally.

As a result, the Korean government has banned migration from Hai Duong, Ha Tinh, Nghe An and Thanh Hoa since July last year.

Despite the measures, the number of Vietnamese nationals illegally residing in Korea surged from 31,691 in 2017 to 70,411 in 2021.

“There is nothing that can be done [if people] change their residing address,” Nguyen Gia Liem, deputy director general of the Department of Overseas Labor under Vietnam’s Labour Ministry, said.

“We cannot limit the ban due to Vietnam’s law on residence,” adding that Hanoi has been asking Seoul to amend its ineffective policies, but nothing has changed.

The Korean government claims the Vietnamese government drew up the measures first to deal with illegal migration.

“The Korean government never requested the banning of migrants from certain regions,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Employment and Labor said.

“Other measures are being discussed upon the Vietnamese government’s request.”

Experts say that the Korean government has worked little to resolve the core issues related to those illegally migrating.

“Korea discriminates against different regions in [Vietnam] by neglecting ineffective policy for the past seven years,” said Park Chang-deok, an official from the Korea Invention Promotion Association,

He said Korea should not dump the problem entirely on Vietnam, calling on Seoul and Hanoi to work together.

Experts say Korea will grow even less popular if it does not demonstrate more flexibility with who gets in.

“The sharp drop in Korea’s popularity [among foreign nationals planning to migrate] resulted from the overlap between the regions banned by the Korean government and the regions surveyed by the UN,” said IOM Vietnam Chief of Mission Park Mi-hyung.

“It is a great misunderstanding that migrant workers will stand in line to come if the government just opens the door for them,” adding that the government needs to impose fewer costs on migrants and expand quotas to meet the demands of Korean companies.

BY LEE TAE-YUN, LEE YOUNG-KEUN [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]