Local Voices: Migrant Workers in Pyeongtaek
Source: Amnesty International’s October 2009 report
It seems juicy bars are the only English language news coming out of Pyeongtaek this month. Four are now off-limits to USFK personnel.
In light of this, here is an Amnesty International report concerning migrant workers rights, with some quotes referring to Pyeongtaek and Songtan. There is plenty in the document referring to factory workers - I remember meeting some here a few years back. There were about 10 people living in a tiny apartment, working 16 hour days working at a local [omitted] company- but it seems all references to this municipality are limited to the sex industry.
Page 83: “I don’t want any other Filipino women coming to South Korea under these circumstances. We came here to work as singers not to sell drinks or prostitute our bodies. The E-6 entertainment work scheme itself is deceptive.” - RP, a 24-year-old Filipino E-6 worker, Songtan, South Korea
Footnote 302: ‘These are towns, such as […] Pyeongtaek, Songtan […] where US military bases are located. As the South Korean economy grew in the 1990s, less women were willing to work in the entertainment sector, including in the US military camp towns. A shortage of workers in this sector created an increase in demand for migrant workers to fill the gap.
Page 89:”PK, a Filipino woman in her twenties, arrived in South Korea on 10 July 2009. Like many others, she was employed to sing but worked instead serving and soliciting drinks at a club in Pyeongtaek…Unable to continue working under those conditions, PK contacted My Sister’s Home and after three days, ran away. With the police, the staff at the shelter went to PK’s place of work and retrieved her belongings, including her passport and alien card, which her employer had confiscated. The role of the police, however, stopped there…”
“In practice, the police do not help E-6 women who have not been forced to have sex with their clients. They do not consider it trafficking if the women run away before this happens. So as far as the police are concerned, these women are not ‘victims’ and therefore the police do not investigate their employers.”
Page 89:
The myth that Korea can tap into the global flows of labour to solve its own manpower difficulties whilst maintaining complete racial homogeneity drives the basic injustices behind the system. It is the very definition of a human rights violation to have a policy of wanting the labour power without the person, and of using the person without conferring any real rights for their own protection against abuse.”
Dr Kevin Gray, University of Sussex Brighton, UK
Read the rest on your own. Also, if you are interested in human rights and mental hospitals in South Korea, I recommend this blog and this book.
Contacts:
Pyeongtaek Consulting Center for Foreign Workers, 618-0965
Pyeongtaek Migrant Community Center, 652-8855
