SEOUL, July 13 (AJP) - Nearly three in four South Korean trade companies that employ foreign workers say those workers have a positive effect on their business, and most see them filling jobs Koreans avoid rather than taking jobs from them, a large industry survey showed Monday.
The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) released the findings at a forum in Seoul on reshaping the country's foreign workforce and immigration policy, as a shrinking working-age population pushes labor shortages up the list of threats to the South Korean economy. The country recorded the world's lowest fertility rate for years running, and its pool of workers aged 15 to 64 has been contracting since 2020.
The survey of 10,040 trade companies, conducted with the Korea Sanhak Foundation from December last year to February, found that 73.4 percent of firms employing foreign workers said the workers benefited their operations. Asked about the workers' role, 44.2 percent said foreign staff complemented their workforce by taking on processes and tasks that Korean workers shun, while only 16.2 percent said they substituted for local hires. Companies named faster and simpler visa procedures, better matching of workers to jobs, and systems for training and retaining skilled workers long term as their top requests.
KITA Chairman Yoon Jin-sik told the forum that the issue reaches beyond filling vacancies. "Foreign workforce and immigration policy is a task directly tied to industrial competitiveness and the foundation for sustainable growth of the Korean economy," Yoon said, calling for institutional groundwork that lets companies secure the talent they need and allows skilled workers to keep contributing.
The forum, held at Trade Tower in southern Seoul, drew about 100 participants, including Kang Min-hwi, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in South Korea, along with foreign scholars invited to compare how other economies manage the same demographic squeeze.
Their diagnoses converged on a single point: what matters is not how many workers a country admits, but what happens after they arrive.
Anna Maria Mayda, a Georgetown University economist, described the American model of drawing in talent through study and temporary work visas, then filtering workers into long-term residence according to labor market demand. Gracia Liu-Farrer, a professor at Waseda University, said Japan never branded itself an immigration country but built a system in which company-based training turns foreign workers into skilled long-term residents, a linkage she said South Korea should replicate.
Yun-Hsiang Hsu, an associate professor at Taiwan's National Central University, pointed to the downside of Taiwan's reliance on private brokers, which delivers workers quickly but saddles them with high fees and drives turnover. He argued for combining private-sector speed with public oversight, and for connecting skill and tenure to longer stays. Herbert Brücker, a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin, called immigration a core answer to workforce decline and stressed integrated settlement systems that tie qualification recognition to vocational training, language education and job support.
Drawing on the survey, Lee Kyu-yong, a senior research fellow at the Korea Labor Institute, urged South Korea to move away from managing inflows, the question of whom to admit and in what numbers, toward a utilization strategy that designs skill formation, career development, visa transition and regional settlement as a single package.
KITA said it has been preparing policy recommendations based on studies of major economies, the company survey and expert consultations, and plans to publish the full proposal in August after gathering further input from the forum.
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