Wages among sticking points in S. Korea's foreign caregiver trial

Debate over authorities’ move to peg salary to minimum wage and caregivers’ duties

- Wendy Teo

As the first batch of 100 Filipino caregivers arrived in Seoul on Aug 6 in a pilot programme to introduce foreign caregivers to South Korea, controversies are already swirling.

Apart from confusion over job scope and a debate on cultural differences, the biggest bone of contention is the Seoul authorities' decision to peg their salaries to the country's minimum wage of 9,860 won (S$9.60) per hour.

Including South Korea's four mandatory insurance schemes covering pension, health, employment and workers' compensation, and based on an eight-hour, fiveday work week, the workers stand to earn 2.38 million won per month, which is nearly half of the country's average monthly household income of 5.44 million won.

This would make South Korea the highest-paying employer of foreign domestic workers in Asia, more than the minimum 200,000 yen (S$1,780) monthly salary that Japan pays its foreign domestic workers and about four times what Singaporean and Malaysian employers pay before levies.

The project, a joint initiative by the Seoul metropolitan government and the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labour, aims to boost population growth and counter a labour shortage in the caregiving and nursing industries.

A Bank of Korea report in March 2024 had highlighted a critical shortage of 1.55 million workers to care for the country's sick, elderly and young by 2042 due to a rapidly ageing society. The country has a population of 51.7 million.

The report had recommended paying foreign caregivers wages below the legal minimum wage to alleviate the financial burden of families who hire them. But this was met with protests from civic groups, which called it "discriminatory and anti-human rights".