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| Presidential candidates put their hands together in prayer during a ceremony to mark the Buddha's Birthday at Jogye Temple in Jongno-gu, downtown Seoul, Wednesday. From left in the front row are Sim Sang-jung of the Justice Party, Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party, Hong Joon-pyo of the Liberty Korea Party and Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
By Kim Rahn
Presidential candidates present hundreds of pledges to woo voters, ranging from workers and parents to the disabled and even pet owners.
But they are not paying attention to foreign residents in Korea, although 1.7 million live here, making up 3.4 percent of the entire population. The reason is foreigners cannot vote.
The election camp for Moon Jae-in, the candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, said it does not have a separate pledge for foreigners here.
"People have many and diverse needs, so we can't satisfy them all," an official at the camp said. "We issued a 340-page book of campaign pledges, but there is no policy for foreign residents in it."
But the camp has some pledges for multiracial families, probably in an effort to appeal to many foreign spouses who obtained Korean nationality and thus can vote.
However, many of the promises _ mentoring programs for children of multiracial families, special schools for such children, and boosting public awareness of cultural diversity _ are just expansions of existing policies.
Ahn Cheol-soo of the minor liberal People's Party does not have any specific policy plans for foreigners, either.
"The only thing about foreign residents we are discussing is migrant workers' working conditions," an official said.
"It is an issue involving the Employment Permit System (EPS), so we can't resolve it easily (without revising the system). It is also about human rights issues, and we plan to keep paying attention to these through discussions with related agencies."
The conservative Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo also has only rough plans about foreign workers and multiracial families, including protecting migrant workers' human rights, improving their working conditions, and providing more support for foreign spouses' settling here and their children's school life.
Sim Sang-jung of the minor progressive Justice Party, who has focused on labor issues for decades, is the only candidate who has included the migrant worker issue in her top 10 pledges.
She promised to abolish the EPS, guarantee foreign wives' stay here when they separate from their Korean husbands, offer health insurance for workers staying illegally, and ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
Foreigners said it would have been better if the candidates had policies for them, but added that's what politics is.
"In politics, they (candidates) care more about voters than non-voters, that's the reality," said Casey Lartigue Jr., the co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center. "They do need to spend their energy on people who can actually vote for them. Of course they will be careful about people who can start campaigns against them."
Jacco Zwetsloot, director of Business Innovation for HMP Law, also said he can understand why the candidates don't have policies for foreign residents.
"Politicians' first priority must always be to benefit their voters, and non-citizens cannot vote for presidents. Also, Korea still has a relatively small population of long-term foreign residents, with a relatively short history, when compared to other countries," he said.
