An improvement plan and analysis on employment realities of foreign construction workers under the employment permit system

Recently there has been a trend of hiring more foreign labors in the Korean construction sites after the introduction of the government policy for foreign workers since 2007, called Employment Permit System (EPS). With the trend in the sites, the skilled and unskilled foreign workers would have become a main resource in the construction site workforce. This study aims to analyzing the effectiveness and the reality of working status for the foreign workforce. In doing so, both mail questionnaire survey and face to face interview with site managers and foreign labors in 38 apartment construction sites around Seoul region have been performed. The results of survey has been compared to the former research, which has been done for foreign labors hired under the old government policy, called Industrial Trainee System. This study found that there still exist many problems in reality of utilizing foreign workers in the sites, and proposed various recommendations for the effective use of foreign labors in the Korean construction industry.