Although South Korea has stopped receiving Vietnamese workers since a high number of these workers have overstayed their visas to work illegally in the country, 40 workers were received again by South Korean employers thanks to their good behavior. These workers flew to South Korea on Wednesday night, said Luong Duc Long, deputy director of the Overseas Worker Center (OWC). These workers are considered “loyal” workers by the employers, since they worked for the same people during a period of four years and ten months and returned to Vietnam on schedule after their contract expired. Therefore, three months after returning to Vietnam, they have been hired without having to undergo the Korean language test, OWC said. They are among 523 “loyal” workers who have returned to Vietnam and have registered with the center to go back to South Korea. Of these, 261 people have been granted visas and will fly to South Korea in the near future. “This is one of the preferential treatments South Korea gives to loyal Vietnamese workers. This is also a measure that helps reduce the number of runaway Vietnamese workers who overstay their visas to work illegally in South Korea,” Long said. As previously reported, South Korea has recently halted the bilateral agreement on “sending Vietnamese workers to South Korea under the Employment Permit System (EPS) program,” since the percentage of Vietnamese workers in the country who are illegal is currently 57 percent. Under the agreement, which was first signed between the two countries in 2004, both parties will renew the program every two years, but after the latest renewal expired on August 28, South Korea refused to continue the program.

South Korea also attached to the document a list of illegal Vietnamese workers. Accordingly, 22,708 Vietnamese laborers are working illegally in the country, of whom 11,347 arrived under the EPS program.

South Korea has previously given warnings about a potential halt to the agreement after statistics showed that by December 2011, 48 percent of Vietnamese workers in South Korea stayed on in the country after their contracts expired, the highest proportion among the 15 countries that sent workers to South Korea.