The making of ‘skilled’ overseas Koreans: transformation of visa policies for co-ethnic migrants in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates a transient border between the temporary and (potentially) permanent migration schemes, by reviewing the changes in migration policies relating to Korean-Chinese (Joseonjok) co-ethnic migrants in South Korea in the last 10 years. We pay attention to Working Visit Status and Overseas Korean Status and the fluidity between the two visa streams, to argue that the government utilises the arbitrary notion of ‘skilledness’ as an indicator to distinguish the temporary from the non-temporary migrants. To interrogate how the visa system operates, this paper reviews politics between and within the government, the market and the migrants. Although the government rhetorically uses visa policies as a quality-control mechanism to selectively accept a desirable population, it can only do so by relying on the market to ‘evaluate’ migrants. However, Korean-Chinese migrants are welcomed in the low-skilled employment market to fill labour shortages, and they also contribute to the expanding migration industry as consumers, which stand at odds with the government’s effort to limit ‘unskilled’ migration. The relegation of the state’s responsibility to the market provides an opportunity for migrants to contest the border and negotiate with the state. However, their negotiation comes at the expense of precarisation of their legal status.

KEYWORDS:

• co-ethnic migration
• Korean-Chinese migrants
• visa policies
• skilled/unskilled migration
• borders

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the support from the Korea Foundation 2015 Fellowship for Field Research and Doctoral Associate Programme at the Centre for Global Social Policy, University of Toronto, funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant on Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care (File No: 895-2012-1021), Ito Peng, PI. We would also like to thank Jaeeun Kim, Sonja van Wichelen, and the anonymous reviewers for reading earlier versions of this article and providing valuable comments. Francis L Collins, and Haiying Li provided valuable insights and support during the period of fieldwork, for which we are grateful. We alone are responsible for any shortcomings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Throughout the paper we use ‘Overseas Koreans’ as a legal status which is not available to all ethnic Koreans overseas (as opposed to ‘overseas Koreans’ with a lowercase ‘o’). Unless otherwise noted, ‘Overseas Korean’ (with a capital O) follows the legal definition as defined in the Overseas Koreans Act.

2. All policy terms and laws are official translations unless otherwise noted.

3. Dongpo literally means ‘brothers’ but is often used with ‘overseas’ (chaeoe). This term means ethnic Koreans who are foreigners or who live overseas. [For a detailed discussion of this term, see Kim (2009)].

4. 99Heonma494, decision made on 29 November 2001 (http://search.ccourt.go.kr/ths/pr/ths_pr0101_P1.do?seq=0&cname=&eventNum=4302&eventNo=99%ED%97%8C%EB%A7%88494&pubFlag=0&cId=010200&selectFont=).

5. HiKorea Announcement, ‘Chung’guk, CIS dongpo, chewedongpo (F-4) jagyokbuyo desang huakde an’ne’ 27 November 2009.

6. Only ethnic Koreans with Chinese citizenship and those with citizenship from the former Soviet Republic countries are eligible for WV status. Ethnic Koreans in the former Soviet countries, also known as Goryoin, are descendants of refugees and migrants from the Korean Peninsula to Manchuria (Northeast China) and Yonhaeju (the maritime Provinces of the Russian Far East). Today the vast majority of ethnic Koreans working in South Korea under this category are Korean-Chinese, and they comprise 99% of all workers under the Working Visit System.

7. Low-skilled work refers to ‘elementary work’ as defined by the Korea Standards Statistical Classification; immoral work refers to meandering activities (defined by the Act on Special Cases Concerning Regulation and Punishment of Speculative Acts, Art 2 p2-1); and entertainment work (defined by Food Sanitation Act, Art 36 p2) to work deemed to be disruptive of local employment order, but these do not have any legal grounds and are decided by the Ministry of Justice internally (interview, MOJ).

8. Ministry of Justice, 8 April 2010, Announcement Gukne jang’gi cheryu mit chuiǒb hǒyong gualyǒn jǒlcha an’ne.

9. In 2011 this changed to two years of continuous employment in regional areas outside of Seoul Capital Area.

10. Anyone who was a qualified Craftsman, or higher, under the National Technical Qualification. For more information on NTQ, refer to Human Resources Development Service on Korea’s website: http://www.hrdkorea.or.kr/ENG/3/3 (last accessed on 25 September 2015).

11. Office of Immigration, as of 31 March 2015. (http://www.immigration.go.kr/HP/COM/bbs_003/ListShowData.do?strNbodCd=noti0097&strWrtNo=172&strAnsNo=A&strOrgGbnCd=104000&strRtnURL=IMM_6070&strAllOrgYn=N&strThisPage=1&strFilePath=imm/)

12. In late August 2015, 117 Korean-Chinese test takers were caught by the police for cheating during NTQ examinations, six arrests were made. [Choi, Moran. (24 August 2015) ch’elyukihan yŏnchanghalyŏko kukkakisulchakyŏkchŭng sihŏm puchŏng ŭngsihan chungkuktongp’otŭl. JoongAng Daily. http://news.joins.com/article/18512053. Last accessed on 28 October 2015].

13. The numbers here come from the Freedom of Information request submitted to Human Resources Development Services of Korea by the authors.