More foreign workers will receive permission to work in the country next year amid a rising labor demand in the manufacturing sector, the government said Thursday.
The nation's foreign workforce quota will be raised to 62,000 for 2013, up nearly 5,000 from the maximum allowable number of new foreign hires this year, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in its 2013 policy plan for foreign labor.
The separate quota for Koreans with foreign nationalities, mostly ethnic Koreans residing in China, will be retained at the same level at 303,000, it added.
Under the envisioned plan, 52,000 of the foreign workers coming into the country under the foreign worker permission policy will be assigned to the manufacturing sector, which is suffering a shortage of laborers, with the remaining laborers to go into the agricultural, livestock and fishing industries, according to the PMO.
"The government decided to increase the quota in consideration of the recent (difficult) economic situation," PMO Minister Yim Jong-ryong said while presiding over the meeting to decide the quota. "I expect the measures to reinvigorate the economy and to resolve labor shortages."
The government also decided to allow companies with less than 10 employees to have up to three foreign workers, up by one from the current quota, while exploring ways to increase support for alien workers without receiving unfair treatment at their workplace.
"The government will increase support for the companies that hire foreign workers according to law, and sternly punish those caught illegally using foreign workers," said Labor Minister Lee Cha-pel. (Yonhap)