By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
In efforts to ease the tight job market for young college graduates, President Lee Myung-bak has pledged to help jobseekers gain overseas work experience through an initiative called the ``Nurturing 100,000 Young Global Leaders Plan.''
But interviews with Korean employees who had enrolled in the government's current program and found work with overseas companies revealed that the reality is much harsher than what they had envisioned.
According to a report by the Hankook Ilbo, a sister publication of The Korea Times, a significant portion of young jobseekers in the government program were disappointed with their experience overseas.
Many said when they found jobs, they were treated as temporary workers with no significant responsibilities. Some encountered discrimination in the workplace and were also first to be downsized during economic slowdowns.
The report quoted one young jobseeker who had worked in Japan last year in the IT field through a state-sponsored vocational training program. She began working in Japan last March, according to the report, but was laid off in December because of the slowing economy in Japan.
The jobseeker looked for other employment opportunities in Japan's IT sector to no avail. She returned to Korea a few weeks ago.
``In Japan, even local IT professionals with years of experience are losing their jobs. So there is little chance that young Korean jobseekers with little to no experience can find employment in that field,'' she was quoted as saying. ``The Korean government should stop giving this fantasy story about overseas opportunities to young graduates unless it can follow through on its promises and look out for them.''
The report pointed out that because of the global recession afflicting major economies, opportunities are shrinking in overseas markets for local jobseekers, and particularly for foreigners. According to the Ministry of Labor Affairs, in 2006, 67 percent of jobseekers, or about 1,200 people who had completed the government-sponsored vocational training program, found jobs overseas. That figure was down to only 18 percent in 2008.
Many jobseekers who manage to find overseas work say they were disappointed with their work at foreign companies. According to Human Resources Development Services of Korea, a state agency, between 2004 and 2008, more than 2,100 young college graduates participated in the vocational training program and went abroad for employment. Of them, 20 percent returned within one year, according to the agency's statistics.
The Lee administration announced last year that it would help train and send 100,000 youths overseas in the next five years to work as regular employees, interns and volunteer workers. The number of trainees who will be allowed to go to Japan, Canada, New Zealand and other countries through ``working holiday programs'' will also jump from the current 30,000 to 60,000 by 2012.