Back East Problems

[Batukhan]

Illegal work in Korea sweeter than home



By Andrei Goryainov

In 2001 Oleg bought a two-week tourist visa and left his home in Vladivostok for South Korea where he joined the army of illegal workers, making whopping money by Russian standards. Almost two years later he still has no intention of returning.

"No one wants to leave," Oleg, one of the thousands of illegal Russian workers in Korea, wrote in a letter to the Vladivostok. "Even if everything isn't perfect, people say that it was much worse in Russia."

A former sailor, Oleg said that before he opted for work in Korea he had been stuck ashore for eight months because his shipping company didn't renew his contract. Flipping through a newspaper he saw an ad offering jobs in Korea, but when he called the company it warned him that these jobs would be illegal, he recollected in the letter.

He paid $450 for the arrangements in Vladivostok, and $200 more on arrival to Seoul. An 'agent' met him and four other Russians at the airport and drove them to a small furniture assembling plant near the Korean capital. (Some Russians take the cheaper option of getting to Korea: the Zarubino to Sokcho ferry.)

Their accommodation was a kind of trailer with no table or beds. No one spoke English, but two Uzbeks at the plant translated the instructions of Korean supervisors. Later they used gestures to make themselves understood.

During his 1-1/2 year stint in Korea Oleg came across migrants from many countries, mostly Asian states such as China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Burma, but some from as far away as Jamaica.

Wages varied, but could be as much as $900 per month - comparable with the pay of a top manager back in Russia - but a workday typically ranged between 13 and 14 hours. Four months later, Oleg was experienced enough to know that this was relatively low payment for the hard work and he changed factories.

Korean plant owners don't require any documents for hire; they just record workers' names, Oleg wrote.

Finding a job in spring, autumn and fall is easy: It's sufficient to walk down a street in the industrial neighborhood near Seoul and you will hear plenty of offers. The distance between plants is no more than one or two meters and all of them need workers. Seventy percent of the plants specialize in construction, Oleg observed.

In winter construction stops and Koreans go to other factories, leaving Russians and other migrants to take an involuntary vacation, which they spend drinking Korean spirits or playing computer games.

The overwhelming majority of vacancies in Korea lies in the so-called 3D sector, standing for "dirty, difficult and dangerous," which doesn't attract local citizens. But even Russian women sometimes end up in these unappealing workplaces. Oleg said they come from nightclubs where they worked as dancers or waitresses but fled because of being forced into prostitution.

Oleg lives in a tiny dormitory room, but others, who have their families with them, rent larger rooms, around 10 square meters in size. These austere conditions are similar to those of native Korean workers. The rent varies from $120 to $180.

Some news reports said that Korea employs 350,000 foreign laborers, which is 2.5 percent of the country's overall workforce. Three quarters of them are illegal.

Korean Consul General in Vladivostok Choi Jae Keun said there were 14,000 Russians in Korea as of November 2002, and 4,400 of them were illegal. The assessment was apparently based on the results of a campaign for legalization of illegal migrants that Korea led last year. As part of the campaign migrants were asked to register with authorities and were allowed to work until March 2003.

Oleg said many migrants didn't risk it and refrained from taking part in the campaign.

Still, its revelations prompted Korea to consider tougher visa rules for Russians, the Korean consul said. But on the other hand, Korean entrepreneurs owning small and medium-sized businesses pleaded the government to extend the work rights of those migrants who had registered with the authorities. The businessmen said they would go bankrupt if it weren't for the cheap labor, Oleg quoted their petition as saying.

In response, the Korean immigration service is conducting another legalization campaign from January 13 to February 22, in exchange for extending the stay of illegal migrants to March 2004. The fine for living illegally in Korea for one year is about $830 dollars, Oleg wrote.



More about chinise problems
Batu

Chinese tourists said to drain money, resources

By Anatoly Medetsky


Photo by the Vladivostok
Chinese tourist-traders sell fruit and vegetables at a Vladivostok market
Like most of the Chinese tourists who pour across the border every day, Piao Ming Yu would be hard-pressed to name any of the sights in Vladivostok.

As soon as she arrives in the Far East city, Piao takes up her post behind a market stand, selling cheap denim dresses from her homeland, even though the Russian stamp in her passport says she's a tourist.

The 45-year-old doesn't come to Vladivostok to relax. She's here to make a living.

``It's hard to find a job in China,'' Piao says through a translator. ``And trade here is better than at home.''

According to the Federal Migration Service, Chinese make up the biggest group of foreign citizens in Russia, though no numbers are available because, in part, many enter the country illegally. Most of the Chinese are concentrated in Far East cities like Vladivostok, 4,000 miles east of Moscow.

On any given day, about 30,000 Chinese tourists are in Russia's Far East, the migration service said. In Ussuriysk, just north of Vladivostok, they've congregated in a small Chinatown, with its own hotels, casinos, and restaurants.

Russian officials complain that while the Chinese are engaged in successful trade in Russia, none of their profits find their way into the local economy. Instead, they say, the money ends up back in China.

``Such economic expansion is observed throughout the entire Russian Far East,'' said Sergei Pushkaryov, chief of the region's migration service branch. ``All the profit is theirs.''

Besides selling cheap clothing, toys and other consumer goods, Chinese tourists are increasingly involved in illegal timber and scrap metal exports through elaborate trading networks, said Pavel Gladkikh, a migration service official.

He said that Chinese businessmen hire unemployed countrymen and send them to Russia as tourists. Afterward, they ship containers of goods for the tourists to sell on the Russian markets.

Receipts from the sales go to firms that the same businessmen establish in Russia. The money is then used to buy timber and scrap metal. They then create Russian shell companies to send the shipments across the border to China.

The shell companies then dissolve before it's time to pay Russian taxes, Gladkikh said.

Eighty percent of the 80,000 Chinese who entered and left Russia legally since the start of 1999 make a living in such schemes, migration officials said.

Chinese tourists also repair shoes, work at construction sites, farms, and restaurants and camp out to pick ferns and ginseng or hunt frogs.

``A group of tourists comes in and goes straight to a construction site,'' Pushkaryov said. ``It leaves 30 days later and another group comes in to replace it.''

Last year, real tourists from southern China started to arrive, but that doesn't mean that their rubles end up circulating in the local economy.

"About 10 little Chinese restaurants opened here last year for these tourists," Gladkikh said. He said Chinese guides of the tourists have orders to feed them in the restaurants.

Chinese entrepreneurs also rent out space in Russian hotels and sell it to the tourists from China, he added.

The migration service says that the Russian Far East has also become a magnet for Chinese trying to reach the West. In 1997, border guards nabbed 18 would-be migrants hidden behind crates of goods at a checkpoint, Pushkaryov said.

``I can assure you that there are groups here that facilitate relocation,'' he said. ``A (tourist) group comes in and registers at a hotel. The next day it may vanish forever.''

[Volodya987]

Do they prefer Renminbi, or Yen for a Rouble. Do they Ringgit in the till with a Dong, or do they prefer to have Won a Taka. Should they Riel in a Euro or Kyat about the Kina? Or do some still Tugrik the toilet paper of the Bavarian Illuminati
Volodya987

[Volodya987]

To dispel confusion:
Taka, Bangladeshi $
Kyat, Burmese $ (Pronounced chat)
Riel, Cambodian $
Renminbi, Chinese $
Euro, European Union $
Yen, Japenese $
Ringgit, Malasian $
Tugrik, Mongolian $
Kina, Papuan New G $ (Ukr. for films)
Rouble, Russian $
Won, South Korean $
Dong, Vietnamese $
Volodya987

[CameoJoey]

HiYa,

Sounds very interesting about Korean work and Chinese tourists. You make interesting news about free enterprise and how it actually works on a grass roots level.
I hope the man you spoke of saves some good amount of his money and sends it home or to a bank as to help him one day return home with money to help him start a new life with a good head start.

Yours,

Robert

[Volodya987]

Brussel's Sprouts are expert in analyzing verbal srachke. Try a spider there.