Re-thinking of Korean recruitment process for multicultural society
based on applying principles of justice
2007123163
Political Science and International Studies
Dongwook Lee
I. Introduction
(1) Goal
The number of foreigners staying in South Korea has exceeded one
million, reaching 1,418,149 as of 2011. Among these foreigners, 720,000 people
are migrant workers. Among 1.4 million, China leads the top with 49.6%,
followed by the United States (9.6%), Vietnam (8.2%), Japan (3.7%), Philippines
(3.5), and Thailand (3.0%). As of September 2011, there are 550,000 workers
with a legal working visa, 93,000 students abroad in the workforce, and about
170,000 illegal workers.
The goal of this essay is to assess current recruitment process and its
details for foreigners in Korea about whether they violate certain principles
of justice, to determine the most suitable political philosophy to be applied
in 2013, and give remedies to each injustice. In this essay I will try to
explain the concept of justice that Korean society thinks in terms of labor
market for foreigners. What is the political philosophy that needs to be
applied in Korea the most in order to remedy the most serious problem? If so,
how do we measure and decide that problem?
(2) Current research
trends
Current research on foreign workers
focused on efficient management, and government policy in order to control
supply and demand. It covered how to legally resolve problems of protection of
rights of foreign workers with arguments whether it advocates or opposes
foreign workforce import as it is. Rather than focusing on founding
principles of the government's policy making behavior and customs of companies
hiring foreign workers, current research so far has been focused only on
raising precision of statistics or giving solutions to improve situations of
Korea and Korean employers. It can be natural that Korean government
organizations and related research institutes have incentives to work for the
benefit of Korea in its perspective, but they seem to have almost neglected
perspectives of foreign workers, notably whether current recruiting system is
just.
(3) Methodology
This essay does not try to find out which regulation or institution
should be fixed. Everyone has different thoughts about justice, so it is
impossible to say that Korea should unify every rules based on utilitarianism,
for example. But there are certainly Korean labor practices based on specific
principles of justice. In order to lead to the conclusion, this essay will
suggest the starting point of premise or fact that all principles of justice
agree upon, and then criticize current government institutions or real life
examples based on it.
II. Elements of Political Liberalism and
Distributive Justice
(1) Increased quota
of foreign workers
Given the situation that small-scale low-skill manufacturing industry in
the suburban areas of Seoul, notably in Ansan, Hwaseong, Siheung and Bucheon,
is in dearth of Korean native workers who can voluntarily devote their skills
and time in those factories, migrant workers, whether legal or illegal, are
forming the lower stratum of the necessary workforce. Thus, the concept of
community should be the entire workforce needed to move the economy of Korea,
and migrant workers have legitimate cause in terms of justice to continue
working. Regardless of possible discrimination in recruiting new migrant
workers in factories, they have a just right to work for the solidarity with
Korean factory owners and other Korean workers. Furthermore, advocating the
equal right or liberty of foreign workers to work in Korea is necessary to
maintain good reputation of Korean government in international relations. In
institutionalism rooted in Kant's democratic peace theory, preserving
infrastructure and resources including human resources plays an important part
to eschew war between democratic countries. A maxim of one country should be
applied to other countries as well, giving birth to the idea of reciprocity as
a result, regardless of difference of GDP and national power.
In fact, Korean government thinks of lack of domestic workforce in 3D
industry as a serious problem, and as a response it has started recruitment
promotion of migrant workers in regions outside Seoul metropolitan area from
2007. Even if the institution was made in order to follow the difference
principle, to subsidize industries with the least attractiveness as a
workplace, there cannot be no complaints about
discrimination between the similar recipients of benefits. The government
sets a maximum number of workers available to work in a specific business unit,
as equal or less than 5 people when number of employees entitled medical
insurance is equal or less than 10, 10 people for 11~50 people, 15 people for
51~100 people, regardless of field of business. This quota works as a measure
to protect Korean domestic workers in general. However, as Seoul also
accommodates similar companies having a same problem of lack of workers,
business units in Seoul complain about reverse discrimination against the
government measure to allow business units in outside Seoul to employ 20% of
foreign workers more. (경인일보, "외국인
고용허가제 '수도권 역차별'”, July 17, 2012) If the quota is set less than quantity of demand for
annual foreign workers in this continuing lack of workforce, companies would
employ more illegal workers not visible in the documentation which would
eventually lead to higher crime rate caused by those workers. This is one
example of the institution to manipulate freedom based on administrative
area.
Also, liberal idea suggested by the government has good intention, but
it ruined the smooth cycle of workforce in practice. The government does not
give chance to be recruited legally to all foreign workers currently in Korea.
There is no member in government who feels solidarity with foreign workers in
general. As a result, owners of factories in Gyeonggi province started to oust
illegal workers for fear that they might also be caught of illegally recruiting
workers without government authorization. Political liberalism led to loss
of high quality but illegal workers who can fluently speak Korean.
(2) Redistribution or
difference principle
From the Rawls's perspective of distributive justice, remedying problems
of a free market in order to give advantage to economic actors with less
capability or less attractiveness produces a just distribution of income and
wealth because the society's moral perspective makes distribution of workers,
including domestic and foreign, arbitrary. Government simply focuses on natural
assets of each workplace and tries to minimize the effect of natural lottery
and historical or social fortune. Every workplace deserves hiring foreign
workers at wages lower than that for Korean workers, and the one with
apparently more inferior condition gets more ability to recruit foreigners.
Government showed the real example of ambiguous barometer of the least
advantaged: actually there is no such difference between workplaces in suburbs
and central Seoul. If there is no clear distinction that objectively finds out a
group of people that need redistribution of benefits without possibility of
reverse discrimination, how can we realize the ideal that Rawls imagined?
While the number of
foreign workers is constantly
spiking up in order to form a multicultural society in Korea, native Koreans
are still stuck with the idea of 'one ethnic identity and related myth'. That
is why in July 2007, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
(CERD) strongly urged Korea to renounce on the idea of one ethnic tribe in order
to promote the multiethnic characteristic and move on relevant government
dispositions. But Korea still has distribution of work field based on
certain ethnic groups. This is ascribed to the image created by the mass
communication media, that the white people work as English teachers with high
salaries in public and private schools, hakwons and private large
companies.
What would be the principles of justice for the society of migration in
South Korea? We can say that those born from their Southeast Asian parents in
South Korea are going to be integrated in a South Korean society, and they will
die in this country, but newly came migrants are not deemed as having equal
conceptions of good and sense of justice. Since a substantial majority of
politically active citizens support an enduring and secure democratic regime,
Korean democratic society is ruled by free and equal citizens based on Korean
ethnic priorities. There is a rare chance that migrants form a majority in a
specific subgroup of society, and Korea is not a cosmopolitan society from its
short history of global openness. Rawls's principles of justice cannot explain
solutions to the society where reasonable people from abroad suddenly integrate
into one homogeneous society, so that minority which is vulnerable to making
their moral and religious doctrines is completely neglected. Since the starting
point becomes different from what he supposed, we cannot predict whether this
society would lead to a fair agreement.
Rawls's hypothetical setting of conditions is helpful for his logical
linking of thoughts, but if only a minority of a society is not the target of
social cooperation, his theory lacks explanatory power. We can think of
intervention of a great power of a mediator or state as Hobbes purported, so
that making institutions and enforcement mechanism can solve all conflicts and
introduce monitored cooperation. However, political liberalism only focuses on
citizens having political reason and political agreement with the principle of
toleration. Are citizens in South Korea tolerant to the disabled and migrants?
What would be the result if some people are not willing to cooperate with them?
As communitarianism works in favor of nationality decided as a community
that does not change, it leads to obligations of solidarity for citizens having
nationality in South Korea. Some government officials and most employers have
this principle going beyond political liberalism. This is the point where free
will of foreign workers becomes nonexistent. Against those foreigners who claim
their rights to expand the labor market to the global level to
work, Walzer might reject the appeal to rights and adopts in its place a
conception of membership in a community, a conception that poses a powerful
challenge to political theories that put rights first. When obligation comes
first than rights mixed with a Korean traditional Confucian hierarchy and
meritocracy mixed with racial discrimination, it creates a worst situation for
foreign workers, especially Joseonjok, Japanese students against employers
having anti-Japanese nationalist sentiment, and most severely, migrant workers
from Southwest Asia.
III. Elements of Utilitarianism
(1) Status transfer
and job training
In order to maximize utility for the majority, Korean government
actively supported migrant workers, especially illegal workers from low income
countries compared to domestic workers. Abrupt economic growth led to rise in
salary, thus making numerous small and medium sized industries based on
3D-difficult, dirty, dangerous- jobs trapped in lack of workforce. Whereas big
companies used their capital to move the production facilities to overseas in
order to lower wages and focus on capital, SMEs could not have another choice
but to stay in Korea. Recognizing this problem and gap, the government started
economic cooperation to make foreigners staying in Korea officially register as
students of job training program in Korean SMEs and thus admitting regular
position recruitment to help eliminate lack of workforce in those enterprises.
After the foreign workers are trained enough to be called skilled
workers, after 4 years and 10 months of continuous work in one small-sized
workplace without replacement, from July 2012 they have a chance to work again
in the same workplace easily after entering Korea again after 3 months of
departure. This should not be misconstrued as government intervention, but
rather this is a government measure towards bringing more freedom of choice of
individuals.
In order to change the status of illegal workers to legal workers, the
government introduced a D3 visa of job trainees, in November 1991 for foreign
investment companies and in November 1993 for small-and-medium-sized
manufacturers, construction companies and farming businesses. Before the
recruitment process, government intervened in order to raise utility of a
community of workers and employers. Since the utility of Korean employers to
have an advantage to mistreat foreign employees must be valued lower than the
utility of foreign employees getting changed status from illegal to legal
employee, this government measure is worth called utilitarian measure.
(2) Wage
discrimination by companies
If the government did not care anything about wage discrimination
between migrant and domestic workers, then the companies' measure of wage
discrimination can be said to have followed the principle of utilitarianism,
where more and more people think that they are well off with or without
arbitrary help. Similar to price discrimination in order to maximize producer
surplus in economics, wage discrimination is used in order to maximize surplus
of producer of labor. As more SMEs are happy that they can employ workers in
order to move their machines, and migrant workers are given legal rights to
work in Korea, it looks like having achieved the greatest utility for the
greatest number.
Employers of SMEs intend to justify their wage policy by arguing that
giving salaries to workers based on Won-foreign currency exchange rate is
without problem. In fact, government supports this idea and even foreign
workers do not think of this as a big problem, since the wage they get can
bring more financial benefit to their family when the money is transferred,
than the benefit if they worked in their mother countries. Government
decision is based on one research conducted by Korea Labor Institute in 2002.
It estimates wage per hour for domestic workers as 4,833 KRW, while setting the
appropriate wage per hour for foreign workers as 3,183 KRW, 65.9% of the Korean
one. Productivity estimates of foreign workers is 76.4% compared to the Korean
one, saying that hiring foreign workforce is advantageous for employers in
terms of productivity per wage. Although the sample is limited to regular
workers in construction sites, it tries to show how foreign workers might be
happy if they are just hired without demanding detailed good working conditions
or equality with other Korean workers. In fact they are not treated as equal
ends in themselves, although it is not easy to find Korean substitute workers
in Korea who are able to do framing, carpentry and plasterwork which all need
careful technic.
But is this good or just in the long run? Before long, migrant workers
will realize that actually there does not need to be any difference in treatment
or value of a person according to nationality. If they improve language skills
and be more impregnated to Korean business norms and culture, discourse about
difference of productivity will lose its justification. Like Korean and
Japanese working in France having same treatment as the French workers, workers
skilled enough in Bangladesh who do not claim any difference in working skills
with another Korean co-worker will demand higher wages. If the factory denies
it, then the efforts of government towards maximum utility erode to fall back
to a situation of lack of workers where the both sides are not satisfied. And
most importantly, utilitarian approach of the government lacks justification
because even in the situation where it's unclear why maximizing utility should
be considered a moral duty, government pursued wage discrimination as a moral
duty in its perspective.
IV. Elements of Libertarianism
(1) No intervention
of government
There is no intervention of government for the recruiting process and
events organized by foreign workers as associations. For example, there is no
limitation to make events for gathering of foreign workers according to their
nationality, in cinemas in Daehakno or at Hangang riverside park.
However, recruitment process already set up based on libertarian ideas
has led to minimalist state role in treating illegal workers pulling side
effects, as often seen in the case like this: "I worked in more than 30
workplaces over the past 7 years. I only received payments from 7 of them, and
received none from others where I cannot use any possible means because I do
not own a visa. I have more than 5 million won unpaid, and if I try to fight
with the owner, then the owner will call me to the police. I have no choice but
to leave that kind of workplace." The state's role is limited to setting
up a fair condition for migrant workers to be recruited, and it does not expand
to managing and monitoring things happening inside the workplace after the
recruitment process. The government does not care about them because after the
recruitment, workers have become means inside the realm of private property.
Since libertarianism also emphasizes fair opportunity as an element of justice,
the government takes no humanitarian approach in order to save lives of migrant
workers illegally working in Korea. This is linked to the principle of 'no
paternalism' of the government, that employers have a directive to have a
rational choice, and foreign workers also have it. However, current situation
of the labor market for foreigners is not suitable for positive development of
a libertarian society. Self-ownership can be achieved, but itself cannot bring
any more benefit to justify income disparity and unequal living conditions,
because the minimal state even set a difference between legal and illegal
workers. Freedom is a value praised by libertarians, but in Korea for foreign
workers freedom means nothing. And even employers do not benefit at all by
freedom of workers and themselves to participate in business having concept of
private property.
V. Conclusion: Most suitable principle of
justice for Korea
The government and companies can take various principles of justice, but
in order to cope with the most serious problem that threats lives of people,
the most needed remedy is giving equal rights of participation to the labor
market, which is most inclined to political liberalism. Korea is currently not
living by domestic workforce and material demand only, so the country's
identity is destined to move towards a community to a global level. This
expanded identity obviously leads to justification of trade of workforce, so
that Korea must be prepared in providing business and institutional
environment. Political liberalism that does not exceed the limit to go further
to communitarianism to think of ourselves as citizens having Korean nationality
and working for the benefit of Korean ethnic community, is the most needed
principle in future legislation of government and recruitment process of Korean
companies.
Utilitarian approach of Korean government and employers is also
accepted, but it comes second to political liberalism. As long as
discrimination against foreign workers exists, government intervention towards
bringing up their rights would lead to decreased utility for employers who want
decent American, European or Chinese workers. There are also general taxpayers
who do not want the government to spend money on job training for foreign
workers.
However, what this essay claims has limitation in determining principles
of justice by quantitative methods using various statistical data. Also, this
essay did not prove the current situation of sentiments of racial
discrimination and nationalism, but rather deemed it as a premise for argument.
But this analysis would surely help understand the problem and give Korean
government officials and employers ways of thinking towards economic benefit
along with achieving justice.
2013년 1학기 정의론 (장동진 교수님) Term Paper입니다. 개인적으로 애정이 가는 글.