Acceptance versus resentment: Two immigrant areas in Korea tell contrasting tales

Park Chan-su, right, the owner of a studio apartment building in Yeongam County, South Jeolla, greets a migrant worker, left, as he leaves for work, in 2025. [JUN YUL]

 
YEONGAM, South Jeolla — On a weekday morning, building owner Park Chan-su pauses his sweeping outside a small apartment complex in a rural county to greet a tenant heading to work on a bicycle.
 
“Heading out early today? Stay safe out there,” Park, 79, said as a man in gray work clothes rides off from the parking lot of a studio apartment complex in Samho-eup in Yeongam County, South Jeolla.
 

Related Article

• Foreign worker postings vanishing as job market duldrums continue

• Korea to reduce low-skilled foreign worker quota by 40 percent, scrap separate limit for shipbuilding

• Immigrant professor hopes Vietnamese village in rural county will make Korea 'the most exemplary multicultural country in the world'

• For foreign workers, dreams are broken by harsh conditions, remade by kind bosses

 
The tenant is a Chinese national who works at a nearby shipyard, one of many foreign laborers in Yeongam County where immigrants make up a growing share of the work force and, according to government research, enjoy some of the highest levels of acceptance by local residents in Korea.
 
“They all work at heavy industry plants,” Park said. “Accidents happen often. Every morning, I tell them to be careful. We make our living thanks to them, too.”
 
Park was born in nearby Muan County and spent 20 years as a civil servant while farming on the side. He began managing the apartment building about a decade ago. Some evenings, he shares beer in the parking lot with tenants like Khojiakbar Akbarov, 28, a welder from Uzbekistan.
 
Akbarov grew up in the Central Asian nation about 5,000 kilometers (3,106 miles) away and came to Yeongam two years ago on a nonprofessional employment (E-9) visa. He works at a shipyard and pays rent to Park with the wages he earns in Korea.
 
“I could work in Seoul or Busan, but the people here are kind,” Akbarov said. “I want to live here for 10 or 20 years.”
 

Khojiakbar Akbarov, an Uzbekistan national who entered Korea under the E-9 visa, shows a photo of his certificate for winning best foreign worker in Korea. [JUN YUL]

 
A recent report by the Migration Research and Training Centre, affiliated with the Ministry of Justice, helps explain why such relationships are common in Yeongam. The county scored 70.1 out of 100 in a survey measuring how willing residents are to accept immigrants as members of society, placing it among the highest-ranked regions nationwide.
 
The score reflects a broader social integration index used by the government to assess how communities are adapting as Korea increasingly relies on foreign labor to offset population decline and labor shortages.
 
At the other end of the scale stood Jeju, which recorded an acceptance score of 52.1, among the lowest in the country.
 
Generational differences were stark. In Jeju, only 45.8 percent of respondents in their 20s said they viewed immigrants as members of society. In Yeongam, 88.4 percent of residents aged 60 and older said they did.
 

Park Chan-su, 79, looks on as a tenant of his building leaves for work in Yeongam County, South Jeolla. [JUN YUL]

 
Research fellow Yoo Min-yi said three factors largely explain regional gaps in acceptance: how many migrant workers hold legal status and contribute to local industries, how often immigrants and locals interact and public attitudes toward migrants from specific countries.
 
Communities with large numbers of legally employed migrants working in the region's core industries — and where foreigners mix regularly with residents rather than forming isolated enclaves — tend to show higher integration scores, according to Yoo.
 
Yeongam County fits that profile. Foreign workers account for about 30 percent of employees at HD Hyundai Samho's dockyard and the surrounding Daebul Industrial Complex, a pillar of the local economy.
 
“At first, it was frustrating because we couldn’t communicate,” said Joo Soon-jun, 50, head of Deokin Enterprise, a subcontractor at the shipyard. “But clear communication is essential, so I started learning a foreign language. When I reached out first, my co-workers studied Korean harder too. You have to think of them as family.”
 

A farmer transports undocumented Chinese migrants by truck in a rural area of Jeju Island in 2025. [KIM JEONG-JAE]

 
Jeju offers a different picture.
 
According to the Justice Ministry, the number of undocumented migrants who entered Jeju under its visa-free system rose from 1,285 in 2013 to 11,191 as of June last year. About 93 percent were Chinese nationals.
 
Jeju introduced visa-free entry in 2002 to boost tourism, but officials say the system has also been exploited by migrants who overstay or disappear into informal labor markets.
 
One morning last year, while Yeongam residents exchanged greetings with foreign workers, a different scene unfolded at a farm in Jeju. Shouts of “One man!” echoed near makeshift dormitories made of prefabricated buildings and shipping containers.
 
A young man ran out and climbed into a pickup truck. Nearby, a woman approached another vehicle and asked in broken Korean, “Here for work? How many people? Pay?”
 
The compound housed about 30 people in their 20s and 30s, all Chinese nationals, spread across 11 rooms. Trucks transport them daily to farms across the island.
 
The phone of the lodging operator, a Chinese man in his 50s surnamed Zhang, rang continuously from before dawn.
 
“Can you send four women tomorrow? The cabbages got eaten by bugs and we’re trying to save what’s left. If not, at least two,” one caller said.
 

Clothes are let out to dry at a dormitory in Jeju Island housing undocumented Chinese migrant workers. [KIM JEONG-JAE]

 
Online, undocumented workers have built their own job-matching networks. On Chinese social media platform WeChat, about 50 group chats last month focused on arranging work for undocumented migrants in Jeju.
 
When contacted by a JoongAng Ilbo reporter, one account replied, “Undocumented stay one-stop service: 13,000 yuan [$1,900]. Includes airfare, hotel, pickup and job placement. Korean partner. Customs clearance guaranteed. Trust above all.” 
 
Undocumented migrants typically move from job to job and avoid public spaces for fear of arrest, Zhang said, often remaining at their lodgings and working for several years before returning home.
 
“Except for some farms or restaurants short on labor, most Jeju residents don’t benefit from the increase,” said a man in his 30s surnamed Li. “People see only side effects. They feel resentment rather than neighborliness.”
 

When a reporter contacted a broker on Chinese social media platform WeChat asking to be invited to a group chat for Chinese nationals in Jeju, the broker replied that a “one-stop service” for illegal stays in Jeju would be provided for 13,000 yuan. [LEE YOUNG-KEUN]

 
Experts say sweeping crackdowns or scrapping the visa-free system altogether would not solve the problem.
 
"Differences in integration are inevitable between migrants who overstay after settling locally and those who exploit the system for short-term work," said immigration attorney Kang Sung-sik.
 
Authorities should analyze how the visa-free system operates in practice and review ways to improve regional acceptance as part of a broader immigration policy approach, Kang advised.
 
Former Jeju Immigration Office chief Kim Do-kyun said eliminating undocumented migration entirely is unrealistic.
 
“We need to evaluate the impact on the labor market and social integration from multiple angles,” Kim said.

BY LEE YOUNG-KEUN,JUN YUL,KIM JEONG-JAE [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]