Impacts of the republic of Korea’s amendment of foreign workers employment act (2009) on Thai labor

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of the change of Korean New Employment Law in the amendment of the Act on Employment of Foreign Workers, etc towards Thailand and Thai labor forces by using secondary data sources collected through various pieces of document and primary data sources derived from formal interviews with the officials and the head of the Department who holds responsibility for exporting Thai labor force to South Korea named Public Overseas Placement Section (EPS) under the control of the Thailand Overseas Employment Administration (TOEA), the Ministry of Labor Thailand including information derived from interviews with certain number of Thai Labors force who are under the EPS as well. Findings of this study help explaining the content resulted from the Amendment of Foreign Workers Employment Act which had clearly specified that the employers have the right to continually hiring foreign workers for 5 years without allowing them to return to their home country in order to applying for their visa extension (excepts the case of changing workplaces and re-employment) and did not caused such bad impacts upon the organizations which responsible for exporting Thai Labors to South Korea. As the EPS and the TOEA have already promoted developments and preparations for Thai Workers, co-operations with the Institute of Skills Development and the Department of Skills Development including aid from the Human Resources Development Korea (HRD Korea) in terms of the Test of Proficiency in Korean (EPS-TOPIK) are as well introduced. Thus, if there were to be any impacts at all, such should be only the positive ones. To make it more clearly understandable, it is said that the changes in terms of the extension of time employment resulted from the changes of the New Employment Law is not only very encouraging but is also considered an essential factor in accelerating developments and preparations for training Thai workers before exporting them to South Korea continuously and effectively. As the Thai workers are under the EPS also claimed that the extension of the time for employment is beneficial to themselves both because it helps save the cost and the time for doing re-entry and extending their visa as well.