In 2004, a 34-year-old Chinese migrant worker Jeong Yu-hong took her own life near Ayanggyo Station in Daegu, South Korea. Through the note she left, later reports linked her death to severe distress caused by unpaid wages and forced labor. Two decades after the tragedy, migrant workers across South Korea continue to fall victim to the same patterns of abusive exploitation, employer dependency and legal vulnerability embedded in the country’s legal framework. 

The persistence of such conditions reflects a broader global tension: governments around the world tighten borders and increasingly assert their rights to state sovereignty—a nation’s right to determine who enters, gets employed or removed from its territory. Under this premise, many states abuse this sovereign power under claims of national security and economic protectionism to strip migrant workers of their basic human rights guaranteed under international law. 

This pattern stands particularly evident in South Korea, where the Employment Permit System (EPS), created in 2004 to regulate labor migration and reduce illegal brokerage, is dubbed “modern-day slavery.” The system’s reliance on employer power and its job-locking structure make migrant workers’ autonomy depend on employer power rather than international standards of immigrant rights.

The root of this controversy traces back decades. Before the EPS, the Korean Government initially launched the Industrial Trainee System to address labor shortages in manufacturing and agriculture by recruiting migrant workers. Throughout the early 2000s, the number of migrant laborers skyrocketed in the country and simultaneously created a storm of 300,000 illegal overstays and 7 million won brokerage fees that put workers into years of debt and hundreds of cases of denied labor rights. 

As a response, the EPS replaced the prior framework to regulate the surge in the foreign labor force. Employers who cannot find enough domestic workers can hire migrant laborers through a government-run visa system. In theory, the shift reduces reliance on illegal brokerage and makes employment more transparent.

Still, legal worker status did not grant equal rights. Migrant workers remain confined at the bottom of Korea’s labor hierarchy, considered more as cheap labor than as rights-bearing individuals. Faizan Mohannad, a Korean migrant worker from Pakistan, said, “I think the pay is too little compared to the amount of work I do…the work is physically difficult and tiring. I want a better job with better working conditions, with better pay for the amount of effort workers put into the job.” 

Udaya Mahadar Rai, chairman of Korea’s Migrants’ Trade Union, echoed, “We are the same people, the same workers, yet people avoid even being around us. They ignore migrant workers, make us do the same work for longer hours and pay us less. Because we come from poorer countries, because they think we are uneducated, they treat us as if we do not deserve respect, and some even resort to violence.”          

 The system’s employment-tied visas shackle migrant worker mobility to find better working environments and, often, escape exploitative employers. The legislation restricts foreign workers to three job changes over three years. Without proper authorization, workers face risks of deportation. 

Sonlong Hoang, a Vietnamese migrant worker in Daegu’s agricultural industry, said, “The system feels strict, especially when other workers or I face problems at work…I tried to change jobs before because of the work environment, but I couldn’t change workplaces because the process is complicated.” 

Job transfers are permitted only under narrow conditions, such as business closure or documented abuse. Yet such human right violations remain difficult to prove, as exploitation often occurs in isolated workplaces with little surveillance. Making matters worse, many workers face language barriers when navigating the Korean legal system. 

Rai underscored how the policy’s job-locking structure leaves significant blind spots in human rights protection. “The Employment Permit System itself restricts migrant workers’ rights. All the power lies with employers, while workers are left only with the obligation to work…when workers want to change workplaces, they first need the employer’s consent. The employer has to file employment change documents and explain the reason for the transfer, but employers almost never approve them. We are left with no choice but to endure and continue working. Otherwise, we become undocumented migrants,” said Rai. 

Migrants stand vulnerable to human right violations because they are not citizens of receiving states; foreign laborers face nearly three times as much vulnerability to exploitation and wage discrimination compared to locals. Rai added, “Many workers take their own lives because they can no longer endure forced labor, discrimination or violence. Migrant workers are treated as less than human while working under EPS, and employers use these restrictions to control every aspect of their lives. Because of the system, workers cannot demand anything from employers.”

Because the policy’s foundation lies less in expanding universal human rights than in controlling undocumented workers, there is a lack of legal and linguistic support systems to protect migrant laborers. A report on foreign workers in South Korea stated that low-quality state-provided interpreters led to discrimination in industrial-accidental claims: occupational disease claim approval stood 61.23% for domestic workers but only 28.97% for migrant workers. 

For many, those barriers emerge long before legal disputes reach formal institutions; it stems from the very factory floors that sustain the country’s economy. Language differences barricade workers not merely from workplace communication, but their right to prove claims, file complaints and exercise their legal rights. Heantssmoont Chea, a Cambodian migrant laborer, said, “One of the hardest things is the language…it’s difficult to communicate with Korean people or fully understand instructions inside and outside of work.”

While it holds true that states reserve the right to control borders and hold the responsibility to protect citizens, the bounds to which they ought to protect the rights of non-citizens under international law remain obscure. Although states possess the authority to manage migration flows into, through and from their territory, their obligation by international law to do so in such a way that upholds the rights of individuals within their territory and under their jurisdiction takes precedence.  

The Employment Permit System transformed legal status into a structure of dependency and legalized exploitation based on the vulnerability of migrant laborers. The Korean government, and by extension, governments around the world, must move beyond simply granting permission for employment and instead guarantee the fundamental protections and dignity owed to those who are non-citizens, yet are still human. 

Before foreign laborers are viewed as key forces that the nation’s economy depends on, they must first be acknowledged as rights-bearing individuals. “The Employment Permit System must be abolished. Instead, we continue to advocate for a Labor Permit System that allows workers to move and work freely. Only then can decades of unjust denial of migrant workers’ rights finally be corrected,” said Rai.

This story was originally published on Jets Flyover on May 27, 2026.