SEOUL - South Korea’s state civil rights agency has urged labor authorities to grant a re-employment permit to a foreign worker facing deportation after their employer failed to meet administrative filing deadlines.
The case involves an immigrant laborer on an E-9 visa under the Employment Permit System who had been working at a manufacturing facility in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, since March 2024. Both the worker and the business owner agreed to extend the employment contract prior to the expiration of the worker's three-year activity period.
Despite receiving five reminder alerts from the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the employer submitted a residency extension request directly to immigration authorities three days before the visa expired without first securing the mandatory re-employment approval from the labor ministry.
The Ministry of Justice rejected the extension due to the missing labor authorization. By the time the employer submitted the correct paperwork to the labor ministry, the deadline had passed by 10 days, causing the ministry to reject the filing and leaving the worker facing undocumented status and deportation.
The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission formally issued an opinion recommending that the labor ministry grant the worker a re-employment permit, ruling that foreign staff should not lose their legal status or employment opportunities through no fault of their own.
The commission also called on regulators to establish systematic remedies to prevent similar administrative loopholes from penalizing blameless employees.
While ACRC recommendations are not legally binding, relevant ministries accept approximately 90% of the agency's formal decisions. Watchdog officials emphasized that stripping experienced foreign laborers of their legal status over employer errors exacerbates critical staffing shortages across South Korea's small and medium-sized enterprises.