Korea should be open, diverse and inclusive society
"The long-term risk to South Korea's economic growth is intensifying demographic pressure," Moody's Investors Service said in its sovereign credit rating report last Thursday.
It then advised Seoul to let more young foreign workers immigrate to Korea to boost productivity and balance the old-age support ratio, at least temporarily.
Even ordinary Koreans know this is necessary. The question is how to do it and how fast it can be done.
According to the global credit rating agency, Korea's growth potential will slow to 2.0 percent after 2025. A United Nations report also said Korea's economically active population aged 15-64, which increased 11 percent from 1998 to 2017, will decrease 24 percent during 2020 to 2040.
The situation is urgent.
Even if Korea manages to lift the world's lowest birthrate of 0.78, it will take at least 15 years for those births to begin to expand the country's working-age population.
Expanding the female workforce is one possible path. But that has limitations due to mismatches in industrial sites. Women cannot fill all of the welding jobs at shipyards or augment the crew of fishing boats sailing off to distant seas.
That leaves immigration as the only short-term solution.
But the government is not sitting around idly. President Yoon Suk Yeol recently called for "bolder and preemptive" moves. The Ministry of Justice will operate a task force to launch the Office of Immigration, an independent agency responsible for all related issues led by a vice-ministerial official. Minister Han Dong-hoon visited France, Germany, and the Netherlands in March to learn from their experiences.
Han said he will not rush to establish such an agency, but make sure to set the necessary groundwork. We support that view. Now that Korea has become an industrialized country, it must tackle the immigration issue head-on. The nation must take a broad, long-term approach while making more immediate, short-term moves.
Still, the government should reconsider plans to hire housekeepers from Southeast Asian countries. The idea, first proposed by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and backed by the president, will cause more problems than solutions if put into action. The mayor cited the examples of Hong Kong and Singapore, where he said families use foreign maids who are paid 380,000 won to 760,000 won ($287-$574) a month.
That idea, however, is not viable here.
First, the Employment Permit System necessitates the application of Korean labor laws to foreign workers and paying the legal minimum wage of about 1 million won or more monthly. Suppose Seoul makes an exception and excludes foreign workers from minimum wages, as some ruling party lawmakers proposed. In that case, the nation will be criticized for being discriminating and inhumane.
Second, the foreign maid system slightly raised the social participation rate of women in Singapore, but failed to do so in Hong Kong. In both city-states, it bore no relation to birthrates. Third, not many Korean families want to hire nannies or maids from abroad, and those who want them cannot afford to pay expenses.
The government, instead of lowering the labor standards for migrant workers, must lift them. Everyone knows that Korean shipyards, steel plants, small workshops, and farms and fishing communities cannot go on without foreign workers. However, the employment permit system virtually "expels" them when they become skilled workers. Complicated reentry procedures and other legal shackles expose them to the tyranny of employers.
Korea cannot afford to let that happen.
Japan, similar to Korea in its low birthrate and psychological adherence to the concept of purity of blood, is going far beyond Korea, flinging its doors open to foreign workers. Tokyo has increased the number of industries that can give permanent residence to skilled guest laborers, offering various other benefits.
All countries make immigration policies to fill in their industrial and social gaps. However, there are differences in national prestige between those that try to exploit foreign workers and those who seek to grow with them. Korea must belong to the latter group by becoming an open, diverse, and inclusive country. Furthermore, it must improve the education system for children of highly-skilled workers from overseas. The bulk of American Nobel laureates are immigrants and their descendants.
We hope the proposed Office of Immigration will move in that direction.
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