Migrant workers face dire conditions at South Korean farms
By KIM TONG-HYUNG Associated Press
March 04, 2021 12:33 AM

“It’s a world of lawlessness,” Rev. Kim Dal-sung muttered over the phone as he drove his tiny KIA over narrow dirt paths zigzagging through greenhouses made of plastic sheets and tubes.

In the bleak landscape of dull blue and gray in Pocheon, a town near South Korea’s ultra-modern capital, hundreds of migrant workers from across Asia toil in harsh conditions, unprotected by labor laws while doing the hardest, lowest-paid farm work most Koreans avoid.

The death of a 31-year-old Cambodian woman worker at one of the farms in December has revived decades-long criticism over South Korean exploitation of some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in Asia. Officials have promised reforms, but it’s unclear what will change.

More than two months after Sokkheng’s death, South Korea this week announced plans to improve conditions for migrant farm workers, including expanding health care access. Daunted by opposition from farmers, officials chose not to ban using shipping containers as shelter.

On a chilly February afternoon, groups of workers wearing bandanas and conical hats appeared and disappeared among hundreds of translucent tunnel-shaped greenhouses — each about 100 yards long — harvesting spinach, lettuce and other winter greens and stacking them high in boxes.

Kim, a pastor and outspoken advocate for migrant workers’ rights, is an unwelcome visitor at the farms in Pocheon, especially after the Cambodian woman, Nuon Sokkheng, was found dead on Dec. 20 inside a poorly heated, squalid shelter at one of the farms.

Her death, and those of many others, highlight the often cruel conditions facing migrant workers who have little recourse against their bosses.

“Farm owners here are like absolute monarchs ruling over migrant workers,” Kim said. “Some say they want to kill me.”

There are around 20,000 Asian migrant workers legally working on South Korean farms, mostly from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Nepal. They were brought in under its Employment Permit System. To keep out undocumented immigrants, it makes it extremely difficult for workers to leave their employers, even when they are grossly overworked or abused.
https://www.thestate.com/news/article24 ... stage_card

Ethical stain on Korea’s Asian labour
The problem is that their cruel living conditions apart, most foreign farm workers are overworked and underpaid with little recourse against their bosses.
LEE KYONG-HEE | New Delhi | July 12, 2022 9:44 am

The one-hour-long film*, jointly directed by Shekh al Mamun and Jeong So-hee, is an embarrassing revelation of the harsh reality endured by people from other Asian countries who are buttressing our shrinking agricultural industry. Al Mamun, from Bangladesh, and Jeong are both labour activists advocating the rights of migrant workers. As the title of the film indicates, a great majority of migrant farm workers – most of them young women – live in greenhouses. More specifically, after working long hours for low pay, they sleep and eat in makeshift structures built of sandwich panels or shipping containers inside a plastic greenhouse.

What distinguishes their so-called “dormitories” from multiple rows of other greenhouses for producing fresh greens around the year is their black shade covering. These shabby living quarters, hidden under the dark covering, consist of small rooms, each shared by three to five workers on average. They are seldom equipped with proper heating or cooling systems, clean kitchens, shower rooms, or toiets. Some even lack a safety locking device. The film shows these shelters – subhuman in a word – along with workers explaining their basic daily problems. These scenes are inevitably linked to the death on a December night in 2020 of a 31-year-old Cambodian woman in a vegetable farm in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province.
*“A Greenhouse is Not a House,” a 2018 documentary produced by Asian Media Culture Factory

.
Full article: https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/et ... 89274.html

Does money and power turn people into heartless cnts?

atst wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 7:49 pm Does money and power turn people into heartless cnts?

Yes. Not always but often.

atst wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 7:49 pm Does money and power turn people into heartless cnts?

You must have never been to the United States.

One thing I will say, business owners here in the states hate OSHA and the EEOC, but they are (2) organizations that come down hard on businesses for not meeting safety standards and workers rights. You wouldn’t believe the fines that are brought about by OSHA for businesses that try to cut every corner possible in providing a safe working environment. For some businesses nothing is more important than the bottom line.