Korea Mulls Visas for Seasonal Foreign Labor

The government will introduce a new visa allowing seasonal labor migrants to stay between one and three months.

Currently only foreign workers who have been hired by small or medium-sized businesses or farms for one year or more are given visas.

But now the government wants to legalize entry of short-term foreign labor to alleviate the labor shortage in busy seasons for farmers.

According to a government official, farmers in Gangwon Province and North Chungcheong Province want to hire seasonal workers from abroad.

The biggest risk is that the workers stay on illegally once their visa runs out. The government wants to first set up a monitoring system and run a pilot scheme to prevent this from happening.