South Korea wants Southeast Asian domestic workers to support families. But are they welcome?

The government plans to allow families to hire Southeast Asian domestic workers to help with childcare and housework, as happens in Hong Kong and Singapore

Aimed at encouraging South Korean women to have children, proposed scheme has led to debate, including around potential discrimination and lower levels of pay

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Foreign domestic workers enjoy a picnic in Singapore. Many Asian women are driven by poverty to seek work abroad as domestic helpers. A lot of them end up in Singapore or Hong Kong. South Korea could soon be another hotspot. File photo: AFP

Published: 1:45pm, 21 May 2023Updated: 1:59pm, 21 May 2023

South Korea’s pilot plan to allow families to hire Southeast Asian domestic workers, aimed at easing the burden of household chores and childcare and addressing the world’s lowest birth rate, is drawing debate over the programme’s effectiveness and potential cultural barriers and discrimination.

The Ministry of Employment and Labour and city authorities in Seoul are reportedly reviewing a scheme to bring domestic helpers from countries including the Philippines to help families simultaneously work and raise children.

“Within the first half of this year, we will draw up detailed plans on how to introduce the foreign domestic worker system, including when and how many workers will be involved” in the pilot, a ministry official said this month.

South Korea currently only allows Chinese nationals of Korean descent to work as foreign domestic workers. They receive around 13,000 won (US$9.81) per hour, according to media reports, have a union and are given a working visit visa.

The discussion over accepting foreign domestic workers from Southeast Asia was first brought up by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in September.

According to Statistics Korea, the country’s birth rate plummeted to 0.78 in 2022, ranking at the bottom among the 38 OECD nations, despite the government spending 2.8 trillion won (US$2.1 billion) over the past 16 years to tackle the problem, including housing and childcare subsidies.