10-1. Report/Registration

○ EPS workers could lose their visa status due to the errors of their companies. Therefore, you should always be careful about registration issues. First, the company must register the EPS worker with a local Employment Center under the Ministry of Labor. If you are not employed and three months have passed without having a report of your employment status to the Employment Center by your company, you can lose your visa status as the job seeking period of three months has passed.

○ It should be reported to the Immigration Office. Because a worker is obliged to report his/her entry to the immigration office, you should register as an alien at the immigration office within 90 days after entering Korea and then receive a residence card (ID). If you transfer to another company, then you should renew your residence card by reporting it in 14 days. If the report is delayed, you have to pay a fine.

○ If you change your workplace, you should apply for the workplace change to your jurisdictional Employment Center within a month after termination of an employment at your previous workplace, and then you should make a new employment contract within three months after leaving the previous workplace. If you are injured, sick, pregnant, or having childbirth, you can extend the period by submitting the proof of your case. When you are hired at a new workplace and make a labor contract, you should get a permission of workplace change from the immigration office before your work begins there.

○ After finishing the initial employment period of 3 years, you must be employed again at the existing workplace to make an additional employment of 1 year and 10 months. In such case, the remaining contract period at the existing workplace must be at least 1 month. The employer must apply for an extension of the employment period no later than 7 days before the contract expires. If the company’s report is delayed, the application for re-employment is not accepted, so you must make sure that the company applies within the period.

○ If you have worked for the same industry for 4 years and 10 months and then apply for the special re-entry system at the same company, you can be covered by the 'special re-entry system' which allows you to work for another period of 4 years and 10 months after leaving Korea for a month. For this, your employer should apply to an employment center for the special re-entry until seven days before the fulfillment of 4 years and 10 months period.

○ An industrially injured undocumented worker can apply for G-1 visa, and even when the worker has returned to his/her home country without applying for the industrial accident compensation insurance, he/she can apply for the industrial accident insurance through EPS center under HRD Korea.

Attention!

• In exchange for re-employment for one year and ten months or special re-entry, employers sometimes ask for a large amount of money in millions of won. It is illegal for the employer to get the money by taking advantage of the weakness of the worker who must leave the country if not re-employed. Therefore, in this case, it is better to consult with a migrant workers support center or a trade union.
• When an employer has a problem with a worker, there are cases in which he/she reports a ‘job abandonment’ maliciously without notifying the worker. Workers may not know this but may later lose their visa status. You should be careful about this because they can report you to the authority when ‘a worker does not work for 5 days or more without the employer's permission’.
• If you transfer your workplace after being re-employed for a year and ten months, you must change the workplace after the new 1 year and ten months of employment period is initiated. If you try to transfer before the time, your employer could cancel the new employment of a year and ten months.

Our demand

Migrant workers themselves must have the right to apply to extend their employment period, not the employers!

10-2. Workplace Change of EPS Workers

• Changing workplace is limited, but it is possible!

1) Although it states that “Employers should not treat their workers unfairly because they are foreign workers” (Article 22, “Prohibition of Discrimination” in the Employment Permit Act), EPS workers are not allowed to change their workplaces freely. This is serious discrimination. KCTU, Migrants Trade Union and many other organizations are in struggles against the government to obtain the freedom of workplace change for migrants. Currently, an EPS worker can change his/her workplace(s) up to three times in three years of employment, and additional two times of moving is allowed in the extended re-employment period only in the cases described below.