Job brokers nabbed for bringing 500 foreigners into Korea on forged documents

By Park Si-soo

Police have caught 15 people for fabricating documents to bring 500 unqualified foreigners into the country.

The job brokers colluded with small construction and trading companies here between July 2016 and May to win invitations or travel visas for their “clients” in developing countries who wanted a job in South Korea, Busan Metropolitan Police Agency said Thursday. They earned 530 million won for helping in the illegal entry, police said.

Among the job brokers were two Tajikistanis and one Russian studying at a university here, police said. Details of the people who entered illegally were unknown. But most were said to be unable to win working or travel visas legally.

“Fabrication is getting sophisticated,” Kim Byung-soo, a senior investigator at the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency, said. “So it’s increasingly difficult to crack down on those who entered the country on illegally obtained visas. We are beefing up collaboration with related bodies to cope with this.”