In the hurt of the sea

In this photo taken from Tegal, Indonesia in February 2016, a foreign fisherman trims fish for lunch. / Courtesy of Advocates for Public Interest Law

• Published Oct 20, 2016 10:37 AM KST
• Updated Oct 20, 2016 10:37 AM KST

Gloom of migrant seafarers on Korean vessels in the spotlight

By Ko Dong-hwan

For months they were forced by their Korean superiors to haul in fish during shifts lasting up to 20 hours. The Koreans provided little in the way of daily necessities to help them endure another hard day on the high seas.

These migrant workers had to make do with filtered sea water to drink and to wash with. Their food was limited to kimchi and fish they caught. They had to share a single washroom while the Koreans had their own that was nominally reserved for senior staff.

Physical and verbal abuse occurred so often the workers considered it the norm on a Korean-operated vessel. Some say the Koreans even raped them.

Fed up with the inhumane working conditions, some escaped the vessel on a ship that periodically came to deliver supplies. They got onboard behind their superiors' backs or told the "gangmasters" they wanted to disembark ― leaving behind the wages the Koreans were illegally holding until their contract finished.

An Indonesian sailor, who worked for six years until 2012 in New Zealand waters on a Korean fishing vessel owned by Dong Won Fisheries, injured his ankle after stepping on a conveyer belt while unloading fish at a warehouse and fell unconscious. The accident occurred because of fatigue and pressure from his boss.

In July, the Korea Coast Guard booked two Vietnamese sailors 10 days after they allegedly stabbed their Korean superiors ― a captain and a chief engineer ― to death on the Kwang Hyun 803, a 138-ton deep-sea fishing vessel, in June on the Indian Ocean. The Busan District Prosecutors' Office found the suspects had a grudge against the victims, who often abused them by saying they were clumsy and slow workers. The office said 15 stab wounds on the captain and eight on the engineer indicated the murders were premeditated.

The poor working conditions of migrant seafarers on Korean fishing vessels and the violation of their human rights were discussed at the recent “East Asia/Southeast Asia Regional Conference on Ethical Recruitment and Policy Harmonization in the Fishing Industry.” The conference, held at the National Assembly in Seoul on Aug. 25-26, was hosted by Saenuri Party Rep. Hong Il-pyo from the National Assembly Human Rights Forum, Advocates for Public Interest Law (APIL) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Seoul. The U.S. Department of State sponsored the event.

The conference came after Korea's National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives revealed in July that 109 migrant seafarers from Korean vessels died between 2007 and 2015. Excluding those who died of disease or in traffic accidents, 88 lost their lives while fishing. The figure includes an Indonesian man who died in February 2014 after two Koreans beat him to death for “not doing his job well.” Others died after being entangled in fishing nets, caught between machines or drawn under the sea.

“Fishing vessels can stay in remote areas of the sea for several years at a time,” Max Pottler, Project Officer from the Labor Migration Unit of IOM, said at the conference. “Fishers aboard these vessels will find it difficult to report abuse, injuries, deaths and request protection. In some fisheries, written employment contracts are scarce, so fishers frequently have to surrender their identity documents. Their movements in foreign ports could be restricted.”

The German inspector has been working on migration and counter-trafficking issues over the past four years in Geneva, Bangladesh and Cambodia. He said more international migrant workers on fishing vessels are low-skilled, illiterate and desperate for money, so they have to take junior positions at the bottom of the rigid hierarchy among fishers. And the language barrier between workers and superiors fuels conflict and abuse onboard. The workers’ irregular status also prevents them from seeking help or protection, or forming unions.

“Currently, there is no international definition of ‘ethical/fair recruitment,’” Pottler said.

The conference had representatives from countries that send the most migrant seafarers to Korea, including Capt. Richard Christian from Indonesia's Ministry of Transportation, Ta Thi Thanh Thuy from the Dept. of Overseas Labor in Vietnam’s Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, and attorney John Rio A. Bautista from the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). They shared details of how many migrant seafarers have come from their countries, how much they earn and what legal mechanisms are there to prevent the workers from suffering inhumane conditions.

“But these countries’ efforts have so far failed,” said Kim Jong-chul, a lawyer from APIL and one of the keynote speakers at the conference, in an interview with The Korea Times. “Countries sending the workers have their own regulations to recruit and employ them and protect their rights overseas, and so do the countries receiving them in terms of registering them. But both parties have been completely out of tune as to trading the workers under the agreed terms, because they have never shared those terms. We have seen no synergy at all.”

The misunderstanding gave migrant seafarers “susceptibility” before being recruited and “vulnerability” after being recruited to accept unfair contract terms and thus suffer abuse. For instance, Korea has set a minimum wage for deep-sea fishing crews at about $475 a month and had it stated in their contracts. But what the POEA has been checking before sending Filipino workers to Korean vessels are contracts that stated the wage at slightly over $200. The Philippines and Vietnamese governments were not aware of that.

Kim has been researching human rights violation cases involving migrant seafarers from Southeast Asian countries for the past two years. He said Korea's fisheries employment system works as if it ignores foreign workers, whose number is more than double that of Koreans, meaning the industry virtually cannot function without them.

He said other things that stopped workers getting fair treatment included: loopholes in wage transfers that pay less than promised; the burden of paying anti-breakaway deposits; a minimum wage set by Korean fishers’ unions instead of the Korean government, and the lack of a complaints system.

“The disadvantages are confined to the foreigners,” Kim said. “Koreans, meanwhile, are protected by safety nets like the industrial accident compensation insurance act and unions of their own ethnicity.”

But Kim Taig-hun, the Director of Fishery Policy from the Federation of Korean Seafarers’ Unions (FKSU), said foreigners are not the only ones who suffer on the ships. He told The Korea Times conditions are as harsh for Koreans as for foreigners.

“Compared to on-land jobs, seafarers’ lives are rough out there,” he said, “which means that all seafarers share the same hardship. Some Korean captains confiscated foreign sailors’ passports to prevent them from fleeing ships and physically abuse them. Such mismanagement has been rooted out after the Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries, together with the FKSU, the Economic and Social Development Commission and the Korean fishing boat owners’ group, annually inspected the working environment quality.”

The on-vessel violence occurred largely because of cultural misunderstandings between Koreans and foreigners, he said. Not many Korean sailors knew that Southeast Asian nationals are disturbed when someone touches their heads and thus offended by Koreans’ way of expressing friendship involving body contact. And he said some of the older Koreans on the boats became targets of violence by younger foreign coworkers.

Kim Taig-hun said a flood of foreign sailors into Korean fishing industry caused its working conditions to stagnate.

“When the Korean government realized there was a shortage of Korean sailors, they should have improved the workers’ working conditions to attract more Koreans,” he said. “Instead, the government allowed a cheaper foreign labor force to fill the gap. And the fishing industry missed an opportunity to improve its working conditions that are far worse than on-land jobs.”

The conference reached an agreement to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to protect migrant seafarers through better communication and information sharing between Korea and the labor-exporting countries.

Kim Hae-gi, Deputy Director of the Seafarer Policy Division of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, suggested at the conference that Korea sign the MOU with the labor exporters ― Indonesia (which sent the most workers to Korea in 2015, with 4,810), Vietnam, China, Myanmar, the Philippines and others ― bilaterally rather than multilaterally to make sure the promises are kept.

“During the conference, the delegates from different countries not only introduced their own regulations but also checked those of the others,” Kim Jong-chul said. “And we realized that the problems are fixable ― like when seafarer recruitment agencies sign a contract with an applicant, the contract's copy must be sent to Korea so the applicant can be registered as an employee under the Korean database and get a visa.”