All the news that's fit to blog

I feel like we're becoming more of news site than a social movement tracker these days, but what can you do? Here's a bunch of news and quasi-analysis on some of the migrant issues we've been covering the past few months.

Organizing Migrant Workers

It seems like the migrant worker television project is going ahead well with new broadcasts including multilingual migrant and world news. Here is a link to their latest news in English, where you can read that the number of undocumented workers is now back to near 50% of the total migrant population. There are also some stories concerning workplace accidents and other issues that help paint a picture of some of the social conditions that migrants often find themselves in. Good work MWTV!

Organizing Migration

In other migrant news, here is a story and here is an editorial titled Foreign Workers Needed about the EPS system that has been in place for over a year now, complaining that the system works too slow and undocumented numbers are rising again. Many hoped that the EPS would get everyone legally recognized and provide a fresh start on the migrant issue. However, as we reported earlier, the EPS was only selectively offered to undocumented migrants, and some of its rules have caused others to become 'illegal' by basically changing their workplace.

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I wonder also if the slowness of the EPS relates more to the encouragement of employers prefering to use non-permitted workers and thus helping to create conflict between policymakers, especially between the coursts and the ministries of justice and labor. The Korean Federation of Small and mid-size Businesses (KFSB) basically brokered most of the migrant flow to Korea to date through KITCO and now through ATCO (an "Alien Traing Corp"). KITCO may not be around anymore as the government is suppossed to take over the brokerage of flows to Korea, but its chairmen used to be retired justice ministry (who handle immigration) officials. I'm curious how close their connections remain since the EPS started. I'll have to do some more research on this one.

Finally, here's a story on some news programs and residency status for foreign females married to Koreans. Interesting, however, that the same rights aren't being given to foreign males.