EXCLUSIVE US Embassy accused of abusing internships

United States Embassy in Seoul / Yonhap

By Choi Ha-young

A college student, who requested to be identified as Park, was supposed to start an internship at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul this December.

After receiving a letter of acceptance July 21, she was preparing for the program — finding a residence in Seoul and buying work clothes — while dreaming of a future career after the internship.

On Sept. 6, however, she learned the program was suspended. She received an email from the embassy, which read “The U.S. Embassy will not be moving forward with our Winter Internship at this time.”

Explanations from the embassy frustrated her.

“The embassy staff simply repeated the answer that the decision was made due to personnel affairs in the organization,” Park told The Korea Times.

The cancellation of the internship program was more devastating for Park because the winter program was her last chance to work there before her graduation. “I even gave up a full-time paid job which gave me a final acceptance notification to do the internship, because the latter was only allowed for university students,” Park said.

“The officials said it was an internal matter, but it was rash to do so considering our future careers. If it’s true, the embassy should not have posted a job opening, should not have carried out interviews and should not have sent an acceptance letter. Personnel affairs are a basic thing any organization should take into account before posting job openings.”

She said she spent a year preparing for the program, doing research and learning the necessary skills to do the job.

The embassy declined to comment on how many students were affected by the internship cancellation. An internship opening notice showed it would choose 41 interns for 18 departments.

“I heard all of the successful applicants received the cancellation email,” Park said.

An embassy spokesman said the decision to suspend the program was discussed at the highest levels within the embassy, adding “it was not taken lightly.”

“Resources normally dedicated to this program are currently needed to support other mission objectives,” the spokesman said. “We regret any inconvenience caused by this decision.”

Park asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for help to lodge a complaint. However, the ministry replied it couldn’t do anything. “It was simply like running into a brick wall,” Park said.

“It was clearly unfair to me and the government body is supposed to help citizens. How can an individual student like me fight the U.S. Embassy? However, the Korean ministry kept shifting the responsibility to other departments and I couldn’t find anybody in charge of it.”

Foreign institutions operating in Korea, including the U.S. Embassy, have been allegedly abusing intern programs, which could be a violation of the Korean Labor Law. They prefer free internships, although Korean firms pay wages to interns.

According to multiple labor law experts and the Ministry of Employment and Labor, internships are categorized as labor, so interns who worked for foreign institutions can submit a petition and claim unpaid wages.

“Even though they are called interns or assistants, they fall into the category of workers if they are virtually carrying out their duties in a fixed workplace,” said Oh Jong-tae, a labor ministry official.