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South Korea’s president ordered officials to find ways to prevent abuses of migrant workers after a video showing a Sri Lankan worker being moved by a forklift while tied up at a South Korean factory sparked public outrage.
“After watching the video, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” President Lee Jae Myung wrote Thursday in a Facebook post. “That was an intolerable violation and clear human rights abuses of a minority person.”
In a Cabinet Council meeting later, Lee again condemned the abuse and raised concerns about South Korea’s international image. He ordered government ministries to determine the status of human rights violations facing migrant workers and other minorities in South Korea and find realistic steps to prevent such abuses.
South Korean human rights activists on Wednesday released the video filmed at a brick factory in the southwestern city of Naju in late February. They said it was filmed and provided by a fellow Sri Lankan worker.
The video shows a forklift driver, who has been identified as a South Korean, lifting another worker who is bound with plastic wraps and tied to bricks. The driver moves him around the factory yard in the vehicle while the sound of laughter from another person can be heard.
The 31-year-old victim, who came to South Korea in November, suffered the abuse for about five minutes as a punishment imposed by the South Korean forklift driver who wasn’t happy with his brick wrapping skills, according to Mun Gil Ju, one of the local activists involved in the video’s release.
Naju city officials said the head of the factory told them he had been informed the event was organized as a prank. But Mun said “bounding a person with plastic wraps” cannot be dismissed as a prank.
The company has about 24 workers, including seven from East Timor and Sri Lanka along with South Koreans. The Sri Lankan victim still works for the factory, according to Naju officials.
The Labor Ministry said in a statement Thursday it will launch an investigation of the factory and inspect whether foreign workers there have experienced beating, bullying and overdue wages.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly from Southeast Asia and China, take low-paying or dangerous work at factories, farms and other sites where activists say many experience discrimination and abuses.