Low birthrate could be solved by hiring more foreign workers: Seoul mayor

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon speaks during a press conference at Seoul City Hall, Monday, to mark the first anniversary after taking office. Yonhap

Oh Se-hoon mentions rising labor shortage issue after first year in office

By Ko Dong-hwan

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said, Monday that the labor shortage issue, stemming from the country's demographic decline, could be partly solved by accepting more foreigners.

Having completed the first year of his fourth mayoral term, Oh proposed the idea after a business trip to Japan to see Tokyo Mayor Koike Yuriko late last month. Oh said he learned that the Japanese capital became more open to accepting foreigners, which he saw as a solution to Korea's aging society and dwindling domestic workforce.

“We already have a large number of foreigners in Seoul who are mostly from China and Southeastern Asian countries,” the mayor said at a press conference at Seoul City Hall. “Welcoming them to be part of our city is the fastest way to secure the city's labor force.”

The mayor said the process must be considered carefully as it would need to gain consensus first.

A profession where the mayor wants to see an increase is nannies. Oh said that having a large pool of babysitters would eventually encourage more young Korean couples to get married and have babies.

The problem is that hiring them is not affordable for many Korean households, given that the wages for babysitters are calculated according to the country's minimum hourly wage, which could rise further. Currently set at 9,620 won ($7.36), Koreans are requesting to raise it to 12,210 won while employers are demanding a freeze at the current level.

“In Singapore and Hong Kong, hiring babysitters doesn't cost more than 1 million won monthly,” Oh said.

“With that cost, the low birth problem becomes treatable. But in Korea, that figure is legally impossible. Here it costs nearly 2 million won. Who would want to have babies under that financial burden? Hiring babysitters in Korea requires introducing a new legal condition that is detached from the minimum wage system to overcome that financial burden for Koreans.”

Oh also spoke about making Seoul more attractive to tourists, adding that the Han River must be redeveloped quickly.

He said that he was in despair when he visited Tokyo and witnessed its well-developed infrastructure, urban redevelopment projects and Meguro Sky Garden. The comparison embarrassed him and caused a sense of remorse because the Han River should have been redeveloped much more by now, he said.

The mayor said he will look to rectify the current state of the riverfront carefully, not rushing but also without delays.

Oh has been vocal about the need for making the river more accessible and enjoyable to city dwellers and tourists. Underlying that agenda was his view that the river has been left too quiet and overprotected by environmentalists when redevelopment businesses could turn the river more active with barges, cruises, riverside leisure venues and cable cars.

“I tasted real bitterness when I recently visited Tokyo,” Oh said. “Ten years ago when I was serving my second mayoral term, I thought the city could finally catch up with Tokyo shortly. But during the next decade, nobody cared to invest a penny in the river. All those years when the river could have been redeveloped evaporated in vain.”

Oh criticized environmentalists and others who objected to the city government's river redevelopment initiatives. He remembered some protesters saying “civil engineering is evil.”

“How can something that sustains all those key city infrastructures be evil?” he said. “Being untouched by civil engineering all those years, the river remained stagnant. I see it equivalent to a recession because other global cities made progress meanwhile.”