Foreign Immigrant Workers and Brides in South Korea

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Historical briefing on immigration
Immigration in South Korea
Brides
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Inequitable distribution of resources around the world has created great disparities among the nations forcing people to migrate from one country to another in such for means of earning a livelihood. Immigration is the movement of people from one place to another usually for the purpose of searching for jobs.

The world has become globalised and the effect of this is that people can easily migrate from one country to another without much difficulty. One of the countries which have experienced such kind of flow of people is South Korea. South Korea has more than one million foreigners making it a multicultural society.

South Korea, however, faces a number of challenges which have arisen as a result of immigration: there is a rapid aging of the population, low infertility rate and shortage of brides.

Historical briefing on immigration

In 1960 to 1970s there was a great migration by the native Koreans from South Korea to other countries. In South Korea, there was a high rate of unemployment forcing the South Koreans to move out to other countries in search for job opportunities.

Koreans sought for jobs in other countries like Germany, where miners and nurses were required. Others went to Middle East where there was a lot of construction going on; thus, South Korea became a labor exporting country. This continued to the late 1980s.

It was from the 1988 after the Seoul Olympics that the Country started to change in the trend that previously had taken over. This time there was a migration transition to a labor importing country (Kim 1). This transition came up because small medium industries came up in South Korea and people were needed to take up jobs in these industries.

Immigration in South Korea

Immigration in South Korea started a long time during the post war period. This could be explained by theories which have been developed to explain high rates of migration.

Firstly, migration could be brought about by market forces as explained by the dual market theory which states that, “International migration occurs due to the chronic demand for immigrant labor that is intrinsic to the economy structure of industrialized society” (Multiculturalism 12). This means that foreign laborers who are better educated, wealthier and status conscious will limit the jobs that they want to do.

Secondly, migration could have been brought by hypergamy, which explains the migration of women as brides. This is used to analyze and study the intermarriages in South Korea. This first originated from the caste system of women in India, marrying men of higher status in the society (Multiculturalism 12).

In South Korea, many women got married to men of higher social status, and wanted to be married to men who were of higher status. Most of these men were mainly from European countries, America, and Australia. This led to their male counterparts marrying women who were of lower social status than them. Most of these women were from China, Japan and Vietnam.

Thirdly, the push and pull theory is used to explain immigration in South Korea. The push represents the negative factors in the area of origin while the pull factor is the positive factors in the foreign country.

In push, South Korea people would move from the country because of the high rate of unemployment and move to the Middle East countries and Germany to be employed where they could enjoy better salaries and better standards of living.

In pull, after the late 1980s there were a lot of jobs in medium sized countries and jobs to be done increased which attracted many people to come back to South Korea for employment (Multiculturalism 10). In addition, the jobs became more because better educated South Koreans were wealthy and did not want to get engaged in the manual hard work jobs or the ones they called the 3D-Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult (Park 1).

This would force the Government to import and employ people who were not natives. This was done by coming up with restricting policies:

Korean government began the Industrial and Technical Training Program for Foreigners (ITTP) from 1991 as a response to the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business (KFSB) and other organizations’ demand for labor. According to this program, the government did not give foreign workers a work permit.

They would go to Korea as trainees, not workers. However, they in fact worked in factories without any training. Since their visa status is trainee, they could not have any basic workers’ rights such as unionizing collective bargaining and collective action. (Lee 3)

Brides

Due to increase in number of foreign workers, the numbers of brides coming from the developing countries mostly the Asian countries have increased dramatically. At the countryside where the young men, according to the Korean culture, had to remain at their homesteads, the brides were limited and became scarce due to the urbanization.

Young men found it hard to find partner who would be willing to give up on urban life. Young men have gone to an extent of using brokers to find Vietnamese women since the Korean women have put up a high standard of living and more strict conditions for the men who would like to marry them (Asia Pacific 2).

Urbanization caused the females to shift from the villages in search for better jobs and livelihood. As a result, the young men were left to marry the foreign brides, who were available.

On the other hand, the foreign workers also intermarried. This would work out when the foreign men who came from developed countries as that time, Canada, Japan, United States, would marry the Korean women or the other foreigners.

However, due to strong son preference in the Korean culture the marriages are being affected in a great way. Sex ratio has been affected in a great way in two ways: firstly, when a couple got their first baby as a son they stopped to have more children and secondly, the strong urge to have a male baby since the emergence of the ultrasound technology in early 1990s has resulted into sex selective abortions (Kim 1).

Conclusion

From the above discussion it has been seen that foreign workers in South Korea are faced with many challenges. The causes of immigration as stipulated have a great effect on the country. One of the effects is hypogamy which has not only had effect on the sex ratio but also on the community.

We find that men have to marry brides from other developing countries mainly since their women counterparts have higher lifestyles which are higher than men would meet as they want to be married by the high standard men from developed Countries.

In addition the son preferences from the traditions have greatly contributed to the sex ratio and the abortions being carried out. The immigration has resulted to a multicultural society.

Works Cited

Asia Pacific. Korean men use brokers to find brides in Vietnam. New York Times, 2007. Web.

Kim, Andrew. Demography, Migration and Multiculturalism in South Korea. The Asia-pacific journal, 2009. Web.

Lee, Byoung. Nationalizing the Global. The Public Discourse on Migrant Workers in South Korea, 2004. Web.

Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism as a social fact in South Korea. Korea. Web.

Park, Young. South Korea: Balancing labor Demand with strict controls. Hansan University, 2004. Web.

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