*Editor’s note: Vacation, business travel, migrant labor, language study, study abroad, international marriage, immigration—many of us have such experiences of crossing national borders, and there are many immigrants living in our country. Ilda examines the emigrant sensibility we will need in order to live equally and peacefully in the age of globalization. This series is supported by the Korea Press Foundation’s Press Promotion Fund.

 

“What kind of visa do you have?”

“F6.”

“F5.”

“E9.”

 

This may seem like an incomprehensible secret code to Koreans, but foreigners understand. F6 is the marriage migrant visa, F5 is the permanent resident visa, and E9 is the foreign laborer visa. I think these three types are the most common not just among the foreigners that I have met, but among all foreigners staying in Korea.

 

These days I don’t have to talk about visa types, because I am now a South Korean. It seems like only yesterday that I first came to Korea on an E9 visa, but it has been 15 years.

 

Korea, the unfamiliar place I fearlessly came to in order to earn money

 

I was born into a Vietnamese family of limited means, and in school, I preferred having fun with my friends over studying. As I also started dating early, it was not surprising that I failed the college entrance exam.

 

While I was drifting along without any particular plans for the future, a friend of my parents told me that they could get me to Korea, so I should go earn money to help out my parents. I didn’t want to be away from the boyfriend I had decided to marry, but I decided to go because I wanted to be a good daughter to my parents, who had worked hard to raise my siblings and me. At the age of 20, I boldly left to earn money in Korea.

 

The moment I got off of the plane at Incheon International Airport, I felt as cold as if I had stepped into a refrigerator. But the Korean winter, with its softly falling white snow that I had only ever seen on TV before, made a big impression on me. At that moment, I really realized that I was in a different country. At the thought that I was truly alone in this land where I knew no one, the cold and loneliness penetrated to my core, and sadness enveloped me. I had thought of this problem before I came and had firmly prepared myself, but when I actually came up against it, my young heart was fearful.

 

A middle-aged man had come to the airport to pick me up. As he drove, he explained through gestures and hesitant English that he was a manager at the company where I would be working. He was friendly and humorous, so my first impression of the first Korean person I met was a positive one.

 

We arrived at my company. It was a textile company that made clothing fabric, and it was located in a small town about 100 km from Seoul. There were more than 10 other foreign workers, from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan. With the addition of Koreans, it had over 40 workers, so I thought it was a pretty big company.

 

After being shown to my dormitory, I was overcome by sleepiness due to the fact that I had been too excited to sleep well for the last few days before coming. I hoped to take a nap in my room, but a company employee came to my room and summoned me to the workplace. I went there, rubbing my sleepy eyes, and was given my orientation right then.

 

▲ A self-help group for Vietnamese women in Korea ©Nguyen Thi Hien

Getting a different salary just because you’re a foreigner

 

What I’ve found most unfair and illogical about Korea is the issue of wages. Because I’ve worked during my entire time in Korea, wage discrimination has been the biggest worry and most disappointing problem for me.

 

At my first job, I couldn’t communicate in Korean, but, perhaps because I am quick-witted, I was always getting a thumbs-up that signified “Good job” from the Korean managers. Whenever that happened, I felt good and like I wanted to do even better, and so I worked harder. As the days passed and I got used to the work, I was able to do it faster than Koreans with more experience.

 

Then, I discovered something unfair. It was that no matter how well a foreign worker did their job, even if they were every bit as good at it as a Korean person, their pay would always be lower than a Korean’s. It wasn’t just the wages, either. Koreans received bonuses or holiday pay that was equal to quite a chunk of their regular pay, but for foreign workers like me, such things were but a dream.

 

Doing the same work in the same place and for the same amount of time but getting paid less for the sole reason of being a foreigner—I knew that this was discrimination. A few times I gathered my hope that I could change this and went to the office to ask for a raise, but it was no use.

 

“That much pay is a lot to you guys. If you take that money to your country, won’t you seem much richer than we do here?” This is what one Korean person said to me, coldly. They were not wrong, but if they knew that foreign laborers like me had to conquer loneliness and the difficulties caused by language and cultural differences in order to earn that money, they wouldn’t have said that.

 

I tried to assert my rights at work in my own way, but I felt a sense of powerlessness. I rationalized the discrimination by thinking, “Yeah, as a foreigner in someone else’s country I shouldn’t expect better treatment like this, the boss must have hired me because he couldn’t afford a Korean worker.”

 

Besides the struggle over pay, I had a pretty good relationship with people at my workplace. I had a Korean friend my own age, and we would go to the public bath together and listen to music we liked. She gave me a present on my birthday, and I was grateful to have a friend like her. I gave that friend the piece of pottery that I got as the second-place winner in a singing competition for foreigners.

 

The older people at my workplace also showed me love and consideration. Some called me “daughter,” or invited me to their houses. Thanks to them, my life in Korea was less lonely. And I was able to learn Korean.

 

Speaking Korean before I knew it, and dreaming of becoming an interpreter

 

In order to communicate smoothly with Koreans, I studied Korean here and there when I had time. But there was one particular incident that made me decide to start studying Korean in earnest. It was meeting a Korean police officer.

 

One day around the time when I had been at my workplace for three years, a few police officers came and instructed foreign workers about safety rules. One of the officers complimented me on my Korean skills, told me how he often went to Vietnam, and asked if I could teach him Vietnamese. I didn’t think I would be able to teach Vietnamese, but I gathered my courage and agreed to help him.

 

For a few months after that, I taught him Vietnamese once a week after finishing work. I was paid for it, but more helpful than the money was the advice he gave me. Among them, one that is still vivid in my mind is, “In the future, trade between Vietnam and Korea will increase and people who speak Korean well will be in demand, so study Korean hard so that you can act as a mediator between the two countries.”

 

I began to dream of becoming an interpreter. I started to study Korean hard, in my own way. At that time, there were few Vietnamese people who spoke Korean well. So I was given the chance to be an interpreter for the police several times. I interpreted police interviews with a Vietnamese marriage immigrant who wanted to report spousal abuse but whose Korean was poor. At that time, I couldn’t speak Korean that well, but I did the best that I could for her, and even accompanied her to a shelter in Seoul and interpreted for her there.

 

In the end, that Vietnamee woman was able to divorce her abusive Korean husband with the help of an organization that assists foreigners. And she was able to get Korean citizenship. When she thanked me, it felt very rewarding. I made up my mind to study Korean even harder.

 

▲ Travelling around Korea is one of my great joys. ©Nguyen Thi Hien

In time, I found that I was more comfortable living in Korea than in my own country. This feeling started with the fact that I can put money in my bank account and pay for everything with one check card, and expanded to how I can pay for the bus or subway just by touching my card to the card reader, and get the food I want to eat delivered to my door with just a phone call when I don’t feel like cooking. I don’t think these modern conveniences will come to Vietnam anytime soon.

 

As a result of having observed Korean people, I can see why Korea has become so economically developed. I think it is because it is a society made up of people who are impatient and so do everything quickly, who have a sense of responsibility, and who work hard.  After having lived with these people for a long time, I have begun to change. I used to take 30 minutes or an hour to eat a meal, but now I can finish one in 5 to 10 minutes. I used to pay no attention to time, but now I am always punctual. It seems that some part of me that I’m not aware of wanted to become more like Korean people.

 

Deciding to stay in Korea as an illegal alien

 

Time passed, and my labor contract ended, so the time came to leave Korea. I was overwhelmed with uncertainty about what I would do for a living if I went to Vietnam, whether my Korean was good enough to get a job at a Korean company in Vietnam or allow me to work as an interpreter. The question of whether or not to go to Vietnam revolved in my head for a while. After a lot of thinking, I decided to stay in Korea with an unregistered status; that is, as an illegal alien.

 

I extended my time in Korea under this unregistered status, trying many kinds of work here and there at textile companies, electronics companies, and garment factories. I don’t have any particular memories of my relationships with the Korean people I worked with during that time, but the wage discrimination that I experienced before was even worse. No matter how well and how diligently I did my work, I received a wage so low that it could be compared with Koreans’, and in fact was below minimum wage.

 

However, I’ve never gotten paid, as has happened to some of my illegal alien friends who’ve had corrupt employers. I think this is not just discrimination, injustice, or illegality, but a human-rights abuse and a circumstance that can kill a person.

 

Of course, even among Koreans there is discrimination between permanent and temporary workers and between men and women. It’s not just a matter of wages; there are many cases in which Koreans see foreigners as cheap labor and worry that they will take away Korean people’s jobs, so they look at us with hostile gazes. However, I think that in order to become a peaceful and beautiful society in which a variety of people can live together, what is most necessary is for the pay and treatment of foreigners who work in Korea to become equal to that of Koreans. [Translated by Marilyn Hook]

 

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/7207 Published: August 24, 2015

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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