1.1. Trends in Labor Migration

Korea was one of the manpower-exporting nations in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but from the late 1980’s the country turned into a labor force-importing nation that had to address the problem of domestic manpower shortages with imported migrant workers. This reversal in the flow of labor was caused by higher income, and elevated education level and lowered birth rate among Korean nationals. Until recently Korea imported only skilled foreign laborers as employees, but introduced low-skilled foreigners as trainees. Realizing, however, that there are a lot of problems in employing migrant workers as trainees to tackle the chronic labor shortages, Korea introduced the Employment Permit System on August 17, 2004 under which foreign low-skilled workers may be imported as employees. As of May 2005, migrant workers in Korea numbered 358 thousands (refer to Table 1), comprising 1.5 % of the total workforce and 2.5 % of all wageworkers in Korea. As is indicated in Table 1, 55.6 % (199 thousand) of foreign workers are irregular migrants. The number of industrial trainees stood at 26,516 persons, or 7.4 % of total migrant workers, and trainees from overseas-invested companies numbered 7,352 persons, o