Autora: María Fernanda González González
Over the past decade, immigration to South Korea from all around the world has been on the rise.
With the heightened popularity of Korean culture in the west and the seemingly easy and profitable path to becoming an ESL teacher, as well as the advent of Korean-made companies like Samsung or Kia, the country is receiving foreign workers in numbers never seen before.
For the nation, this has been seen as partially beneficial, being in dire need of workers as it faces yet another year with the lowest birthrate in the world, at an average of 0.81 children per fertile age woman, quite a ways from the global average of 1.6, as reported by the BBC. However, as the government turns to policies to facilitate immigration, the people of South Korea still have their qualms about multiculturalism.
At the same time, the high cost of living for foreign workers, paired with the struggle with discrimination and less than ideal working conditions, may be telling of a reality that falls short of the K-drama fantasy and is in fact enough for many to decide to leave behind their lives to return to their own countries.
As such, is moving to work in South Korea worth it?
Korea, by the numbers.
In 2021, Michaela Cricchio, an English Teacher living in Seoul, shared to CNBC her budget of $1,740 USD a month (around ₩ 24000), where she was able to put aside almost half of her earnings into her savings for retirement. She spoke of having an increased quality of life in Korea than in her native USA, and a lot more spending power as her place of work paid for her residence in a fully furnished studio in Seoul. At the time of writing of the article, she spoke of wanting to transition into being a digital nomad, working online and living in places around the world.
Cricchio’s case could sound utopic to some – and in fact, it might be. While certain foreign nationals might be awed at the perceived cheapness of Korean prices when compared to their homes when coming from a country with a higher valued currency like dollars or euros, for many others the cost of living in Korea far exceeds what they are able to afford.
Ranked the 14th most expensive city in the world in 2021 (right above London, England), a month of living in Seoul can come in at around $1460 USD for a one-person household as per livingcost.org. Half of this accounts only for rent, one of the highest of the country. While Cricchio’s hagwon place of work provides her accommodations, this is not the reality for many, particularly less privileged workers from western Asian countries, who oftentimes will have to face the rising housing costs and expensive security deposits.
Other Korean immigration hubs, like Busan or Incheon, also report high costs of living, both cashing in at over $1080 USD per person for a month of living.
Another important obstacle immigrants face in Korea is the food, finding it cheaper to eat out than to cook with pricey imported ingredients and different staples than they might know how to cook with back at home.
In such ways, foreigners might find that the nation is as unrelenting with the homogenization of their food as they are with their customs.
Korea, homogeneous.
Another one of the main drawbacks shared by immigrant workers in South Korea is the discrimination and otherwise lack of acceptance from Korean nationals.
As reported by Carnegie Endowment, despite the steady rise of immigration, South Korea’s policies and general cultural interaction remain conservative and ethnocentric in most parts of the country. This has placed women, people of different ethnicities and sexual and gender identities at a very visible disadvantage in the job market and in their daily lives.
As of 2020, reported by the Italian Institute for international Political Studies, more than half of the country expressed a limit in their acceptance of foreigners, and about half of the surveyed population believed that the rates of immigrant population lead to a rise in crimes across the nation.
Immigrant women in particular face a firmly patriarchal culture that seeks to make them fit into a tight knit role as mothers, wives and daughters-in-law, as social integration programs strive to teach them to cook, prepare shrines and address the men around them – the Korean way.
Even the so far regarded as a spectacular opportunity of becoming an ESL teacher at a Korean middle school can come with its own set of problems. As an anonymous source told VICE, some teachers may face everything from racism and sexual assault to having to hide crimes and take part in illegal activities in order to keep their contracts. Many of them, in fact, resort to leaving the country without telling anyone, seeing uprooting their lives as a better alternative to the toxic overworking environments at the hagwons.
Korea, a safe haven?
So, despite all the hardships faced by immigrant workers throughout the nation, why do people keep moving to South Korea?
On all accounts, moving to South Korea comes with great advantages as well. One need only look at the crime rate statistics, one of the lowest across the world and in decline since the early 2000s, as per macrtotrends.net, to see why so many see the nation as an opportunity to raise their standard of living and give their families a better hope for the future.
Besides, the low cost of healthcare and the great support offered by Korean insurance can be very attractive to foreign nationals from countries with lesser healthcare networks.
All in all, it is likely that what we are seeing is only the early stages of the Korean immigration boom, as Korean leaders move to create policies and opportunities to incentivize immigration, paired with the experiences shared by lucky workers who don’t face as many trials and tribulations might in time lead to more and more workers and families moving across the sea in search of their own South Korean Dream.
SOURCES
Bloomberg. (2022, July 6). These are the 50 costliest places for expats to live and work. Gulf Business. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://gulfbusiness.com/these-are-the-50-costliest-places-for-expats-to-live-and-work/
Chung, E. A. (2021, June 29). How South Korean Demographics Are Affecting Immigration and Social Change – Demographics and the Future of South Korea. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/29/how-south-korean-demographics-are-affecting-immigration-and-social-change-pub-84819
Liu, J. (2021, July 16). How a 26-year-old expat in Seoul, South Korea lives on $24,000 a year. CNBC. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/15/how-a-26-year-old-expat-in-seoul-south-korea-lives-on-24000-dollars-a-year.html
Seoul: Cost of Living, Salaries, Prices for Rent & food. (2022, August 7). Livingcost.org. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://livingcost.org/cost/south-korea/seoul
South Korea Crime Rate & Statistics 1990-2022. (n.d.). MacroTrends. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/crime-rate-statistics
South Koreans Support Immigration, But Conditions Apply. (2022, March 9). ISPI. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/south-koreans-support-immigration-conditions-apply-33979
VICE. (2022, May 22). The Horrors I Saw at Korean Private Schools | Informer [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPKl_xJDREQ