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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In 1979, Kim Min Gi and other activists from South Korea's democracy and labour movements clandestinely released the collective radio play “Light of a Factory” (Kongchang'ui Bulbit). This work was used to mobilize factory workers into the broad-based minjung or people's movements that were challenging the dictatorship. The play documented the lives of Korean workers and the suppression of their desires under the authoritarian regime. The plot centered on female workers in an export factory who decide to organize a union. It was loosely based on real struggles such as the massive strike by female employees at the Y.H. Trading Company in 1978-9; a strike which spilled over into the struggles of the Korean democracy movement. The music was a cacophony of different styles and influences: from US camptown progressive rock, to Western and Korean folk music, to shaman ritual and other traditional styles. Cassettes of the play were rerecorded on home stereos and passed around from hand to hand.
1 For more on the Minjung movement see Namhee Lee's (2007) The Making of the Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, as well Hagen Koo (2001) Korean Workers: the Culture and Politics of Class Formation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. For more on migrant protest practices and their connection to Korean social movements see Jamie Doucette (2005) “The New Minjung? Migrant Workers in South Korea.” Korean Quarterly, 8 (4), and The Postdevelopmental State: The Reconfiguration of Political Space and the Politics of Economic Reform in South Korea (2009) [unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia], pp 190-238,
2 Hankyoreh, 21 February 2009. “Foreign population grows four times in eight years.” Link [Accessed July 2009].
3 Young-Min Moon, The Composition of Social Memories in Vicente et al (eds) Activating Korea: Tides of Collective Action, Seoul: Insa Art Space, 2008, pg 34. Moon's essay was prepared for a Korea/New Zealand exhibition of work by Korean art collectives which included a ‘music café ‘performance art exhibit involving Minu and Soe Moe Thu from Stop Crackdown and the Korea-based Mixrice art collective.
4 See Sunok Chun. (2003) They Are Not Machines: Korean Women Workers and Their Fight for Democratic Trade Unions in the Seventies. Aldershot: Ashgate.
5 Kim, Dong-Choon. (2006) “Growth and Crisis of the Korean Citizen's Movement.” Korea Journal. Summer 2006, pp. 99-128.
6 More recently, fears of population decline and further labour shortages due to Korea's low fertility rate have influenced the public debates on labour migration.
7 Andrew Eungi Kim, (2009) “Demography, Migration and Multiculturalism in South Korea” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 6-2-09, February 1, 2009.
8 The Trainee System was eventually phased out in 2007, and replaced entirely by the Employment Permit System (EPS), which first came into effect in 2004.
9 Another form of migration into Korea, also similar to Japan, involves the ethnic-Korean diaspora, primarily from China. Many of these workers also lacked proper documentation, although technically they had access to special visas for overseas Koreans. As Katharine Moon reports, throughout the nineties migrant workers were represented in the press as unwelcome strangers, even the ethnic Korean Chinese – who were initially welcomed by the Seoul Shinmun newspaper with the “call of hyoruk” (literally, blood shared family). See Katharine H.S. Moon (2000) ‘Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism’ in Samuel Kim ed. Korea's Globalization. London: Cambridge University Press.
10 See Timothy Lim (2003) ‘Racing from the Bottom in South Korea? The Nexus between Civil Society and Transnational Migrants, ‘Asian Survey, 43:3, pp. 423-442, for more on the history of migrant-NGO interactions leading up to the reform of the ITS.
11 Glenda S. Roberts, (2007) “Labor Migration to Japan: Comparative Perspectives on Demography and the Sense of Crisis.” The Asia-Pacific Journal.
12 Amnesty International. (2009). Disposable Labour: Rights of Migrant Workers in South Korea. London, UK: Amnesty International Publications, p. 35 (also available online). See also, Korean National Human Rights Commission publications on migrants in Korea, and Prey, Robert, and Seon Ok Lee. (2007) “Tragic Fire Illuminates South Korea's Treatment of Migrant Workers.” The Asia-Pacific Journal.
13 The EPS also enabled the government to take over much of the job of recruiting migrants away from quasi public-private recruitment and training agencies managed by the Korean Federation of Small and Mid-Sized Businesses. This has given the government the greater ability to monitor migration and also use it in foreign policy. For example, during the Roh Moo Hyun administration, the Korean government began to invest more in Mongolia and procuring spaces for Mongolian migrant workers was a coordinated part of this process. This joint negotiation of investment and migration is similar to the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement; see Gabriele Vogt (2007) “Guest Workers” for Japan? The Asia Pacific Journal. It worth noting that Korea has also tried to secure visas for Korean skilled workers in its free trade negotiations with the United States.
14 It is important to be clear that deportations under the current government of Lee Myung Bak are overall, a continuation of the policy carried out by the liberal, reform-oriented governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. In particular, virtually every elected president and executive member of the Migrants' Trade Union (MTU) has been deported over the past several years, though the MTU continues to survive as an organization. During the most recent Lunar New Year, police raided a Nepali restaurant under suspicion of ‘illegal gambling. ‘Although no such activity was found to be taking place, immigration control officials accompanied the police and detained 10 MTU members. Thus it seems that targeted crackdowns are still common, even if the procedural basis of these has recently been transformed, or, rather, become more ad hoc in the case of politicized migrants. See the MTU report on the Lunar New Year arrests on their website [Accessed March 2010]
15 In 2005, 36% of marriages in rural areas were between Korean men and ‘foreign wives’, while about 13.6% of marriages overall in Korea were international marriages. In terms of nationality, Vietnamese made up 53.2% of total foreign wives, followed by Chinese (34.1%) and Filipinos (6.9%). See the yearly reports of the Korean Immigration Service, accessed 17 March 2010. The latest trend is that more women are coming from Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and the Philippines. The rate of international marriages doubled between 2003 and 2008. In 2008 alone, there were 38,431 international marriages (see Hankyoreh, “Foreign population…” cited above).
16 Timothy Lim, “Who is Korean? Migration, Immigration, and the Challenge of Multiculturalism in Homogeneous Societies” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 30-1-09, July 27, 2009.
17 See Heejung, Kim (2007), ‘Official Multiculturalism Revisited: Multicultural Transition in South Korea’, Oh KyungSuk (ed.), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review. Hanul books
18 Heejung Kim (2007), ‘Official Multiculturalism Revisited: Multicultural Transition in South Korea’, Oh KyungSuk (ed.), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review. Hanul books
19 This is a rather drastic departure from previous civic education where the most important topic in the civic textbook is how distinctive and unique Koreans are from all the other ethnic groups in the world and how lucky Korea is to be ethnically homogeneous. (from Heejung, Kim (2007), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review.)
20 Interestingly, Lee writes that “the government doesn't recognize a foreign man who marries a Korean woman as an object of multicultural policy even though he also has a semi-national status. Foreign brides are considered to be under their husband's control since patriarchy is so deeply entrenched in Korean society. Thus Korean society accepts foreign brides as members of society. However Korean society refuses to acknowledge that foreign husbands are members of Korean society because it cannot accept foreign husbands as substitute patriarchs.” (from Seonok Lee (2007), ‘Korean Multiculturalism and the Migrant Social Movement’, Oh KyungSuk (ed.), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review. Hanul books)
21 Seonok Lee (2007), ‘Korean Multiculturalism and the Migrant Social Movement’, Oh KyungSuk (ed.), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review. Hanul books)
22 Lee, 2007
23 Ibid.
24 Lee writes, “There is an interesting international component to this concern as Korean society started worrying about social stability and the second generation of children from intermarriage couples after seeing images of the French riots in 2005.” (from Seonok Lee (2007), ‘Korean Multiculturalism and the Migrant Social Movement’, Oh KyungSuk (ed.), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A Critical Review. Hanul books)
25 Nicholas P, De Genova. (2002) ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 438-439
26 See, for example, Ken Kawashima's excellent (2009) study The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press. See also Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2008) “Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative Perspectives on Nationality in the Prewar Japanese Empire.” The Asia-Pacific Journal.
27 A further group to add here might be the Migrant Worker Network in Japan, which seems more similar to the Joint Committee for Migrants in Korea, which is largely led by Korean civil society activists, than the migrantled unions. See also, Ryoko Yamamoto, Migrant-support NGOs and the Challenge to the Discourse on Foreign Criminality in Japan. The Asia-Pacific Journal.
28 This was a slogan commonly used by the Equality Trade Union – Migrants' Branch, the precursor of the Migrants' Trade Union. The Migrants' Trade Union (MTU) was formed in April 2005 as a union by and for migrant workers, regardless of status. Its membership is made up of both documented and undocumented migrant workers from Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia who work primarily in the manufacturing sector. The MTU provides many services for migrant workers such as counseling, advocacy, Korean language training and specific support groups for women migrant workers. However it is not able to enter into collective bargaining with employers because the Korean government refuses to recognize MTU as a legal union, despite a Seoul High Court ruling that it should do so. The government claims that MTU includes undocumented migrant workers whose right to freedom of association is not protected under South Korean law; however, the labour movement and human rights scholars argue that the Korean constitution guarantees all workers basic labour rights and does not differentiate on the basis of workers' nationality.
29 As one of the founders of MWTV, Mustaque Ahmed Mahbub put it in an interview with the Asia Rights Journal; “Sometimes the Immigration Bureau contacts us, wanting to know if any of our presenters are illegal migrants and the like. They try to pressure us. But all the same, I think they know they can't go too far. They're a bit afraid of us too, because we are the media.” AsiaRights Journal, “Korea's Migrant Workers Find a Voice on Air” Issue 6, 2006. Accessed here on March 6, 2010.
30 The languages MWTV broadcasts in change occasionally depending on the availability of anchors and translators. Languages most often represented are Korean, English, Chinese, Mongolian, Indonesian, Nepali, Burmese, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai and Filipino. Programs have also been produced in Russian and Sinhala in the past. MWTV's website can be found here.
31 For more on tensions between the migrant trade movement and the JCMK see (2004). “An interview with Kabir Uddin of the Equality Trade Union. “ZNET, January 5th. Link [Accessed January March 15, 2010].
32 AsiaRights Journal, Issue 6, 2006. accessed here on Oct. 27, 2009
33 Interview with Minod Moktan, June 4, 2008.
34 Interview with Park Su Hyun, MWTV staff member, May 25, 2008.
35 Interview with Mustaque Ahmed Mahbub, June 9, 2008.
36 Examples include the unilateral passage of new media and news laws, the replacement of major broadcasting networks' executives with pro-government figures, the use of the Public Prosecutor's Office to detain and question journalists critical of the government, the Grand National Party's (GNP) and conservative newspapers' attempt to take-over of public broadcasting and the evening news in particular. Most recently, the dismantling of the public media center MediAct, and the independent film theater Indie-Space, are further disturbing examples of this trend.
37 A Korean foundation called the ‘Beautiful Foundation’ has stepped in to provide some additional financial support
38 State funding has been denied to a total of 1,842 social and civic organizations, from women's help lines and charitable foundations to economic policy NGOs, most of whom participated in the candlelight demonstrations against Lee Myung Bak's policies during the summer of 2008.
39 As further evidence of this phenomenon, current members of the Migrants' Trade Union (MTU) met deported former leaders in Kathmandu, Nepal from June 12-14, 2008 to hold an “International Conference on Networking between Countries of Origin and Migrant Workers in South Korea.” According to the press statement, the conference recommendations included: establishing an International Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (IMWSN) for the purpose of regular systematic communication and joint action between Nepal, Bangladesh and South Korea with the prospect of expanding to include other countries in the future, planning pre-departure education and training for workers before migration to South Korea, forming organizations for returned migrants in their home countries, and protesting in front of the South Korean embassy in different countries to make known demands directly to the South Korean government. (MTU, June 6, 2008. International Conference on Networking between Countries of Origin and Migrant Workers in South Korea, accessed here on December 20, 2009.)
40 It is possible for foreign spouses to become naturalized but they must give up their other nationality.
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