Welcome to BASE21

Jeong Gue-sun
President of FWR

"They are pitiful, please help them."
These words were uttered by a Pakistani who used to be a migrant worker, now married to a Korean woman and the father of their 4-month old baby, when he visited me for counselling as he talked about his friends' problems.
'They are pitiful.' These words weighed heavily in my mind. I raised my voice, "You're not pitiful, you only have difficulties!" And then he said, "Most Koreans say so."
We can meet the kind of Koreans who despise and give a hard time to migrant workers, and the kind of Koreans who make migrant workers pitiful. There is a big difference between these two kinds of Koreans but there is a common feature. It's hurting the self-respect of migrant workers.
Migrant workers in Korea are optimistic and have a strong will not only because of their high degree of education and economic ability to come to Korea (even it is debt from their neighbors) but also their desire to cultivate their future positively. So the most difficult thing for migrant workers in Korea is the inhumane attitude of Koreans like ignorance and despise, not hard and long working hours.
There is a Korean proverb "There is no noble and humble job", On the contrary it means there is severe distinction between jobs. For a long time, Koreans have preferred white collar jobs (office work) to blue collar jobs(3D work). So blue collared workers had shame and devoted strong attention to the education of their children to escape from becoming blue collared workers.
This social mood changed after the massive workers' struggle
in 1987. The became increasingly recognized and declared themselves as workers. They also were powerful in organizing. From that time Koreans' consciousness of rights increased. Korean workers also could keep their self-respect for 10 more years. And they did not have to arrive at puberty to care for other persons who were in difficult situations - irregular workers, women workers, migrant workers, etc.
The point in Korea which is better than migrant workers' home countries is richness of materials and convenience. And the next point is their consciousness as citizens and consciousness of rights. On the other hand, the problems which migrant workers select is that Koreans have no surplus and look so busy and unhappy even though they work hard and have every electric home appliance and cars.
So the Korean society is very difficult to understand for migrant workers because they are not unhappy with few things and they want to live with pleasure and not work hard. The Koreans who think migrant workers are pitiful have good minds but it's not enough to understand migrant workers' culture and lives.
Then I think the most important thing is to understand with whole heart and care.
A new year has come. The change of the year does not have a big meaning in someone's long life history but it is meant to check one's own life. I hope we, all migrant workers and supporting groups set our goal this year as 'keep self-respect of migrant workers'. Do not depend on others, migrant workers should stand by themselves.