38% of foreign workers are paid less than 2 million won a month
Twenty-one percent of salaried foreigners said they had experienced some kind of discrimination at least once this year. But only 14 percent of the alleged victims spoke out.
By Park Si-soo
Nearly 38 percent of 846,000 foreign salaried workers in South Korea were paid less than 2 million won a month this year, a government
on immigrants and foreign workers said.
It was down from 42.7 percent last year, but still falls nearly 1 million won short of the nationwide average monthly income of regular and temporary workers ―
.
The report, co-published on Wednesday by the Ministry of Justice and Statistics Korea, said 39.5 percent of the workers were paid on a temporary or daily contract, up 14.2 percent from 2017. The proportion among salaried Koreans fell to 23.8 percent.
Twenty-one percent of salaried foreigners said they had experienced some kind of discrimination at least once this year. But only 14 percent of the alleged victims spoke out.
State of origin was the No.1 cause of discrimination (60.9%), followed by Korean ability (25.7%), appearance (6.6%) and profession (2.6%). Nearly 64 percent said their complaints worked in solving the problem, while 36 percent said they didn't.
As of May 15, the number of long-term foreign residents aged over 15 was 1.301 million, up 6.2 percent from the previous year. “Long-term” resident refers to those staying here legitimately for over 90 days.
Chinese Korean had the biggest portion of 40 percent, followed by Chinese (11.5%) and Vietnamese (10.9%).