Seoul City is working with the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor to consider a pilot project to bring domestic workers from Southeast Asian countries to help with childcare and housework in families in the city, the Korean Herald reported.
“Within the first half of this year, we will draw up a detailed plan on how to introduce the foreign domestic worker system, including when (it will start) and how many workers will participate in (the pilot project),” an official from the Ministry of Employment and Labor said.
The Seoul government plans to issue E-9 visas to this group of workers, who will then be able to be hired by families in South Korea through certified service providers as early as this fall.
There are already Southeast Asians working as informal domestic helpers in Korea, so allowing them to work legally by imposing a minimum wage is believed to provide more options for parents with young children, thereby encouraging families to have children to address the current record low birth rate.
Previously, Seoul Mayor Oh Se Hoon had proposed this idea to increase the birth rate and prevent Korean women from leaving the workforce mid-career.
However, one controversial provision is allowing foreign domestic workers to be paid below the minimum wage, in order to ease the burden on households.
The opposition Justice Party has criticised the move as an attempt to establish “modern-day slavery” and “legalise racism”. Trade unionists have also called the move “outdated”, according to the Guardian .
In the pilot project, the Seoul government did not apply the controversial provision.
Even so, with the Korean minimum wage of 9,620 won ($7.25) per hour in place, foreign domestic workers’ hourly wages would still be 30 percent lower than those of existing domestic workers in Korea. The average hourly wage for local domestic workers is around 13,000 won ($9.8) per hour for Korean-Chinese nationals and over 15,000 won ($11.3) per hour for Koreans.
Meanwhile, there are also concerns that introducing foreign domestic workers will cause local domestic workers to lose their jobs and that the monthly salary of 2 million won including holiday pay for domestic workers is too high to cope with the falling birthrate.
Minh Hoa (t/h according to Zing, Kinh te & Do thi)
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