Photo : YONHAP News
The South Korean government has begun taking steps to improve the E-9 visa for non-professional employment to increase benefits for higher-skilled foreign workers and better manage workforce supply and demand.
Reporting by KBS on Wednesday confirmed that the Ministry of Employment and Labor is in discussions with related ministries on how to divide the E-9 visa into two or three tiers.
The plan would create E-9-1, E-9-2 and E-9-3 subcategories.
Under such changes, participating workers who improve their skills, such as obtaining job-related certificates, can move up to a higher tier, which would come with greater benefits, including eased restrictions on changing jobs and the ability to bring their families over.
The Foreign Employment Permit System, implemented in 2004, allows small- and medium-sized companies that fail to hire South Korean nationals to employ non-professional foreign workers.
Foreign workers who enter the country under the system on an E-9 are initially permitted to stay for up to four years and 10 months, but once extended, they can work for up to nine years and eight months.
During this period, changes to workplaces are prohibited in principle, with exceptions allowed only for special circumstances such as cases of unpaid wages or workplace closures.
However, these tight restrictions and the prolonged separation of foreign workers from their families for over nine years have been described as contrary to human rights.
According to the labor ministry, there are 282-thousand-839 people in the country on E-9 visas as of December last year, 80 percent of whom are working in the manufacturing sector.
The ministry is expected to announce its E-9 visa reform plan as early as next month.