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The Korean government has decided to provide large-scale support for agricultural workers to stabilize the supply and demand of rural workers during this year's busy farming season. Specifically, it includes foreign seasonal workers and domestic rural labor brokers and helpers. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs recently announced the '2025 Farming Season Manpower Support Plan' containing these contents.
Trend of expanding supply of foreign workers through MOU method
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs decided to first expand the supply of foreign workers and support their stable settlement. The number of cities and counties introducing seasonal workers will be increased from 130 to 134, and the number of assigned workers will be expanded to 68,911. The public seasonal workers, in which agricultural cooperatives operate the workforce and provide workers to farms on a daily basis, will also be greatly expanded.
In particular, in order to support the rapid entry of seasonal workers during the busy farming season, we have decided to operate a ‘seasonal worker visa issuance team’ in major immigration offices in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice. Currently, some immigration offices take about two months to review documents submitted by local governments.
In addition, in order to improve the living environment of foreign workers, we plan to increase the number of agricultural worker dormitories to 30 by 2027. We are also reviewing a plan to expand the scope of future business support from local governments to agricultural cooperatives so that all agricultural cooperatives operating public seasonal labor can have dormitories.
In addition, we plan to strengthen education for farm owners in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and local governments to prevent human rights violations against foreign workers, such as wage arrears by employers, and to encourage seasonal workers to subscribe to agricultural worker safety insurance to prepare for industrial accidents involving foreign workers.
It is difficult to invite family from the home country of a marriage immigrant
Currently, in order for a marriage immigrant's family from the home country to come to Korea as a seasonal worker, the marriage immigrant must live in a rural area or have a farm that he or she knows well. Therefore, marriage immigrants who live in urban areas such as Seoul, Incheon, or Gyeonggi-do without a farm cannot bring their family.
Because of this, some marriage immigrants pay money to seasonal labor brokers to bring their families from their home countries, and then get scammed. The earnestness of marriage immigrants who want to invite their families from their home countries to Korea is much greater than what Koreans imagine.
A married immigrant living in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province said, “I want to invite my family from my home country to participate in a seasonal work program, but I can’t because I live in an urban area.” She added, “I had no choice but to pay a large deposit and commission to a broker, but I was scammed. Please let us bring our family from our home country as workers.”
We hope that the Ministry of Justice will take these circumstances into account and come up with a plan to allow married immigrants living in cities to invite their families from their home countries.
Mary Eve of Papaya Story
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