By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
About 200,000 Koreans lost jobs to foreign workers here as of 2007. Under the Employment Permit System (EPS), foreign migrant workers ― mostly from Asian countries ― have replaced Koreans in blue-collar jobs, yet few have complained.
The lack of backlash against the lost jobs starkly contrasts with what is going on in the United States where Democratic Party leaders, unionists, and even some journalists addressed the exporting of jobs by Americans as a major campaign issue.
Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Keheliya Rambukwella said Korea has gained from a free movement of labor and this probably explains why there is little discontent about foreign workers here.
``The presence of migrant workers does not jeopardize Koreans themselves,'' the minister said in an exclusive interview with The Korea Times last week in Seoul.
About 15,000 Sri Lankan workers are now working in Korea under the EPS. They account for 3.7 percent of foreign workers here.
Minister Rambukwella said Koreans are enjoying a high standard of living as a consequence of the prospering economy, and this probably affected its people to see their job as more than a means to make ends meet.
His insight is in line with the unique ``structural trait of labor shortages in blue-collar jobs'' in the economy.
Thirty-one percent of Koreans aged 20 or more have a college degree. These educated people feel that they are unfit for blue-collar jobs in the manufacturing sector whose hourly wage goes below the level of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, marking $13.56.
This caused the local labor market to face a unique policy challenge such as the youth unemployment rate (10 percent as of 2007), which hit a record high, while small- and medium-sized firms suffered labor shortages.
Migrant workers mostly from Southeast Asia played a role in resolving the problem of labor shortages in blue-collar jobs, which consequently created mutual gains between the two economies through the EPS.
As of late last year, 187,000 foreigners worked in the country. More than half of them, 54.5 percent, were involved in the manufacturing sector; 22.6 percent in construction; 20.6 percent in service; and 2.1 percent in the agriculture and fishery industry.
Minister Rambukewella said both Korea and Sri Lanka achieved mutual gains through the EPS and he looks forward to working closely with Minister of Labor Lee Young-hee regarding the issue further.
``I am quite content with working conditions of Sri Lankan workers in Korea,'' he added.
Building a win-win situation through a free movement of labor seems not to be the case in the United States where major presidential candidates, especially Democratic Party leaders, addressed Americans losing jobs as a core campaign issue since America sent blue-collar jobs overseas in the 1990s.
Labor experts said the United States has begun outsourcing even white-collar jobs to foreign countries after 2000.
Some journalists raised voices against ``the shipment of American jobs to cheap foreign labor market.''
CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has run a series of investigative reports on multinational corporations sending jobs overseas on his Lou Dobbs Tonight program since 2003.
Dobbs summarized his team's findings in a book, titled ``Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas.''
``Thousands of quality jobs are lost every month, jobs that will be performed by people in China, India, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere at a fraction of what American workers earn,'' the book said.
He questioned if the United States should continue to ``sacrifice our jobs, our middle class and our national wealth to corporate America's pursuit of international trade agreements that are free trade in name only.''