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The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on August 13 recommended the Prime Minister to abolish the industrial trainee system by steps. It criticized the trainee system stating, that the trainee system was adopted for technical training and cooperation's with the Third World Countries originally, however, it was utilized as a irregular method to use migrant workers with low wage, so, recommended that the trainee system will be abolished by steps, undocumented workers will be authorized, and the policies overseas Koreans have advantages will be improved.

In addition, NHRC recommended that the employment permit system which secures the basic three labor rights and social welfare devices is needed for employing migrant workers righteously, and considering that the trainee system, causing severe human rights violation, has creating very negative national image of Korea.

NHRC, on its paper of‘A Way for Improving Alien Labor Power Policy', fundamentally agreed to the government's policy that 260,000 undocumented workers who voluntarily reported themselves will be deported by March 31, 2003, however, with considering of harsh checking and human rights violations in the process of checking and rounding up, actual need of migrant workers in Korean economy and their contribution, and the situation that their illegal staying have been allowed by a kind of irregular labor policy, the commission suggested that it is reasonable that the undocumented workers may leave Korea partly in different stages by granting them time-limited amnesty.

In the meantime, an officer of National Arrangement Office stated, “It is said that the working foreigners will be authorized, or preparation period for departs will be given them, but we have never considered that kind of policy. Our aim is that all illegal staying foreigners will leave Korea.”,“As the first step, we collectively check those who have not reported themselves, and the foreigners who changed their working sites without reporting the government from the end of August, and, from March next year, we will check all illegal foreigners and, deport them with fining penalties, as we have announced before.”