Foreign Dancers Highlight Plight of Migrant Workers
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
A parade of foreign dancers is considered a highlight of events in amusement parks, offering great joy to visitors. However, behind angelic smiles and beautiful costumes is the pain of living under slave-like contracts.
According to the Migrant Workers' Labor Union, 150 dancers at Everland, the nation's largest amusement park located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, are subject to slave labor-type contracts. They work under individual contracts with Dong-il Entertainment, a manpower supply company that introduces dancers to Everland.
The contract states that both Everland and Dong-il do not take any responsibility for dancers' accidents during performances except for 2 million won that is paid by an insurance company and dancers can be fired if they get hurt or contract an illness that requires more than one month of treatment.
As well, collective action by two dancers or more is banned, according to the contract.
In Everland, a 30-minute parade takes place six times a day. There are one-hour breaks between parades. Although it's called break time, there is actually no time for rest as dancers are busy preparing for the next performance, changing costumes and revamping their makeup. Summer is an especially tough season as they wear heavy fur clothes and decorations.
Oxana, a 29-year-old dancer from Ukraine, hurt her leg during a performance. Although the pain was serious, she had to continue to perform in a butterfly costume that weighs more than five kilograms and carry heavy ornaments.
As a result, she suffers from chronic backaches as she did not receive proper treatment and she could not tell anyone for fear of being fired.
``I hurt my left leg because I lost my footing while getting down from the stage. As I did not receive adequate treatment, the pain got worse and now I have a serious backache,'' said the former ballerina.
``Although dancers practice and perform more than 12 hours a day, we receive salaries of 700,000 to 800,000 won per month on average. Also, if we sit down due to fatigue during rehearsals or fail to dye our hair blonde once a month in order to look exotic, we have to a pay a fine of 100,000 won, which is more than 10 percent of our monthly salary,'' she said.
Dong-il admitted unfair contents in the contract but said that they did not actually fine dancers for such causes.
``We will delete the unfair clauses of the contract and take responsibility for the Ukrainian dancer. However, we only fine dancers in serious cases like absence without notice or drunken performances,'' said Kim Chung-woon from the company.
Everland officials said that Dong-il supplies their dancers and they do not know what the contract stipulates.
``Like foreign dancers at Everland, many migrant workers suffer from rampant slave-like contracts. They have no chance to get access to education or information regarding their labor rights or Korean labor law,'' said Han Seung-wook, an official from the Migrant Workers' Labor Union.