POCHEON, South Korea (AP) – “It’s a lawless world,” murmured Reverend Kim Dal-sung on the phone as he drove his little KIA through narrow dirt paths that zigzagged through greenhouses made of plastic sheets and tubes.
In the desolate landscape of dull blue and gray in Pocheon, a city close to the ultra-modern capital of South Korea, hundreds of migrant workers from all over Asia labor under adverse conditions, unprotected by labor laws, while doing the most difficult and underpaid agricultural work Most Koreans avoid.
The death of a 31-year-old Cambodian worker on one of the farms in December revived decades-old criticism of South Korean exploitation of some of Asia’s poorest and most vulnerable people. The authorities have promised reforms, but it is 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 access to health care. Intimidated by the opposition of the farmers, the authorities chose not to prohibit the use of containers as shelter.
On a cold February afternoon, groups of workers wearing bandanas and conical hats appeared and disappeared among hundreds of translucent tunnel-shaped greenhouses – each about 100 meters long – harvesting spinach, lettuce and other winter vegetables and piling it up. those in tall boxes.
Kim, a pastor and defender of migrant workers’ rights, is an unwelcome visitor to the farms in Pocheon, especially after the Cambodian woman, Nuon Sokkheng, was found dead on December 20 inside a precarious and miserable shelter on one of the farms.
His death, and that of many others, highlight the often cruel conditions faced by migrant workers who have few resources against their employers.
“Farm owners here are like absolute monarchs ruling migrant workers,” said Kim. “Some say they want to kill me.”
There are about 20,000 Asian migrant workers legally working on South Korean farms, mainly from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Nepal. They were brought under your Work Authorization System. To prevent undocumented migrants from entering, it is extremely difficult for workers to leave their employers, even when they are overworked or abused.
A Korean farmer watched, frowning with his hands on his hips, then climbed on a tractor and started following visiting reporters to prevent his foreign employees from speaking to them.
Another shouted and waved his hand furiously as he approached, interrupting an interview with two Cambodian workers who returned to a shipping container.
South Korean farmers are also suffering. The industry is in decline, hampered by decades of labor shortages and increased foreign competition. They import labor to work long hours on low wages.
“Who are you to come here?” the owner of the farm was furious. “Do you even know what agriculture really is?”
Activists and workers say migrant workers in Pocheon work 10 to 15 hours a day, with only two Saturdays off each month. They earn about $ 1,300-1,600 a month, well below the legal minimum wage that their contracts should guarantee.
Rising before sunrise, they crouch or bend for hours as they make their way through the huge plastic tunnels on each farm, planting, weeding, harvesting and thinning the crops.
Workers are often huddled in fragile, poorly ventilated shipping containers or huts, like the one where Sokkheng died.
Activists who interviewed her co-workers say she came to Pocheon in 2016 and died just weeks before returning to Cambodia to spend time with her family. Sokkheng appeared to have no obvious health problems, but an autopsy showed that she died of complications from cirrhosis, probably aggravated by the harsh conditions in which she lived and worked, activists say.
She died during a wave of intense cold, when temperatures dropped below 18ºC. The shelter’s heating system was defective, and other people who lived there went to stay with friends to escape the cold. Sokkheng refused to go, activists were told.
A Nepalese rural worker, who asked not to be named because he feared reprisals from his employer, said he was thinking of running away to find work in a factory as an undocumented migrant after five years working for a farmer he said was abusive. and occasionally violent.
“At least I’ll have more days off,” said the worker, who went to a coffee shop off the farm one night for an interview.
“It is an extreme amount of work (every day). You don’t have breaks to go to the bathroom. You don’t even have time to drink water, ”said the Nepalese. He complained of terrible pain in his back and shoulder, comparing the situation to slavery.
Only 10% of the 200,000 migrant workers brought to South Korea under their Work Permit System, or EPS, work on farms. About eight out of ten EPS workers work in factories, while the rest work in construction, fishing and jobs in the service industry.
The Ministry of Labor told a lawmaker in October that 90-114 EPS workers died each year from 2017 to 2019.
Ven. Linsaro, a Cambodian Buddhist monk residing in South Korea, helps with funerals and sending cremated remains to bereaved families in Cambodia. He said he knew of at least 19 Cambodian workers who died in 2020. So far, in 2021, a rural worker and a worker have been found dead in their shelters.
“Most of them are between 20 and 30 years old. . . Many of them simply died in their sleep, ”said Linsaro. He wonders if serious illnesses are not being detected because of the workers’ lack of medical access.
The Work Authorization System was launched in 2004, to replace an industrial trainee system from the 1990s, known for exposing migrant workers to horrible working conditions. The aim was to grant migrant workers the same basic legal rights as Koreans. But critics say the current system is even more exploitative and imprisons workers in a form of servitude.
Migrant agricultural workers are more vulnerable than factory workers, as the rules on working hours, breaks and breaks do not apply to agriculture. The country’s Labor Standards Act does not apply to workplaces with four or fewer employees, which is typical of many farms.
Choi Jung Kyu, a human rights lawyer, says workers on these farms are virtually unprotected against unfair layoffs or theft of wages, are not compensated for accidents at work and have limited access to health care. Often, they need to pay $ 90 to $ 270 a month to stay in miserable makeshift dormitories, which are often just containers equipped with propane tanks for cooking. These temporary structures usually have only portable toilets.
“The government must absolutely stop allowing farms with fewer than five workers to use EPS,” said Choi.
Three Cambodian workers who were interviewed on a Pocheon farm, but did not want to be identified, complained about the hard work, the extremely cold winter in South Korea and the harassment of their employer, who calls them “dogs”
They said they persevere because wages are better than in Cambodia, which gives them a chance to escape poverty.
“I will deal with any difficulties that are thrown at me here,” said one, who is helping to pay for the education of his three brothers. He dreams of buying a farm and a cow when he returns home.
Farmers insist that they too are barely able to survive.
“Our farming communities are very old,” said Shin Hyun-yoo, the leader of a farmers’ association in Gyeonggi province, where Pocheon is located. “Many will collapse if it becomes more difficult to hire foreign workers.”
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AP writer Sopheng Cheang contributed from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.