South Gyeongsang Province to welcome over 4,000 foreign workers to tackle rural manpower shortages

Foreign seasonal workers gather at a greenhouse in South Gyeongsang Province. Courtesy of South Gyeongsang Provincial Government

More than 4,000 foreign workers are expected to arrive in South Gyeongsang Province this year to address the shortage of rural manpower, according to the province.

The areas designated for the Seasonal Worker Program, which acts as a manpower brokerage center to recruit foreign workers, will increase to four, up from one last year.

The program is a legal mechanism allowing foreign nationals to be hired for short periods in rural areas, specifically targeting chronic labor shortages during farming and fishing seasons. Through a rural manpower brokerage center, foreign workers are deployed to farms in rural areas for eight months.

Compared with more steady agricultural work in facilities like cultivation greenhouses, finding people for labor-intensive fieldwork such as sowing and harvesting, where conditions are more demanding and wages are lower, is relatively challenging.

Against this backdrop, Hamyang in South Gyeongsang Province initiated a public seasonal work project last year, promptly supplying foreign seasonal workers to farms.

This year, the project will expand to the same province's Uiryeong, Changnyeong and Geochang, with approximately 145 foreign nationals being employed for eight months continuously. This expansion aims to facilitate the allocation of foreign workers to farms experiencing workforce shortages.

Last year, a total of 3,465 individuals were allocated from 15 cities and counties in the province, including Changwon. As of December, 2,861 people had entered the country to help remedy the shortage of farmers.

This year, the Ministry of Justice plans to assign 4,190 individuals to rural sites, marking a 2.5-fold increase compared to the first half of the previous year.

In May, additional manpower will also be provided to farms not allocated in the first half of the year that apply for foreign seasonal workers.

“Securing public workers in rural areas is seen as a strategy to reduce labor costs and address the workforce shortage for farmers,” said Kang Seung-je, chief of the Agricultural Policy Division of the South Gyeongsang Provincial Government.

“We will make our effort in supporting a foreign seasonal worker project to address short-term labor shortages during the farming season.”