The survival of Korea’s rural economy now rests on a collective silence. In a pear orchard in Hanam, South Gyeongsang Province, the land my grandmother cultivated her entire life, that silence feels almost natural. There was a time when neighbors gathered to help one another with the harvest, sharing food and labor as a matter of course. That scene has faded into memory. The trees are still heavy with fruit, the fields as wide as ever, but the faces of those who work there have completely changed.
Now they are migrant workers from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and beyond. Many of them live outside the law under the label of “undocumented.” They bend their backs at dawn, sustain orchards and factories under extreme heat, yet in the language of the state they do not exist. Korean society depends on them while simultaneously refusing to see them. They are necessary but unacknowledged—present in plain sight, yet socially erased. They are ghosts in the system.
This contradiction is sustained not only by policy but by everyday attitudes. Ignorance about discrimination — and more dangerously, indifference to that ignorance—permeates daily life. The openly scrutinizing gaze directed at foreign workers is routine: on the street, at job sites, in restaurants. Accents, skin color and gestures are constantly evaluated, often without any awareness that the scrutiny is itself discriminatory.
This indifference is frequently disguised as “jeong,” a Korean concept associated with warmth and affection. Personal questions are asked without consent and boundaries crossed under the guise of friendliness.
“Do you have a family?”
“When are you going back?”
“Can you handle Korean food?”
These questions may sound benign, even kind, but they draw a clear line. Migrant workers may be brought close, but never close enough to be fully respected. They can work alongside Koreans, but they are rarely accepted as supervisors, leaders or people of authority. This quiet double standard defines how Korean society positions migrant labor.
The documentary “Hello, Minu” gives voice to this otherwise muted reality. The film follows Minu, a migrant from Nepal, through 18 years of life in South Korea. He works in factories, speaks at rallies and organizes cultural festivals for migrant workers. Minu states plainly, “I didn’t just work in this country. I lived here.”
This is more than a claim of residence. It is a declaration of human existence. Yet it is precisely at the point when a worker becomes a speaking subject that the system responds with force. Silent labor is tolerated; vocal humanity is not.
A series of targeted immigration crackdowns in 2009 saw every past executive member of the Migrants’ Trade Union (MTU) was subjected to arrest or deportation, including Minu. Framed as immigration enforcement, these actions functioned as explicit union suppression. Migrant workers were rendered invisible once again, this time through institutional violence.
Deportation is often described as an administrative process, but in practice it is a form of coercion based on early morning raids, forced separations and relationships abruptly severed. Minu recalls, “I am not a criminal. But I was taken away like one.”
Deportation does not merely move a body across borders. It amputates an entire life at once, cutting people off from workplaces, communities, languages and identities.
This structure can also be found in education. At a language institute where I once worked, an Indian American instructor was constantly required to prove her legitimacy. Parents focused less on teaching quality than on her appearance, asking whether there were “white teachers” available. She was a native speaker, yet never fully recognized as one. What occurred in that classroom and what happens in rural orchards operate under the same logic.
It is now 2026. The children of migrant workers, as well as those from multicultural families, are already entering Korean classrooms. Questions of language, discrimination, belonging and access to education are no longer future concerns. They are immediate realities. These children ask a simple question: “Where do I belong?” Korean society has yet to offer a clear answer.
With fertility rates at historic lows and an aging population, migrant labor has become indispensable to Korea’s manufacturing and agricultural sectors. Yet the price of this necessity is invisibility: Do not demand rights. Do not stand out. Remain at the bottom of the hierarchy. As long as these conditions are met, their presence is tolerated. As Minu puts it, “We are treated not as people, but like disposable batteries.”
What happens in classrooms in Seoul, orchards in Hanam and airports where deportations are carried out converges on a single question: Who do we recognize as fully human? Korean society relies on migrant workers but refuses to accept them.
When will Korea abandon the myth of ethnic homogeneity, a myth already colliding with reality? A society that binds its most essential members in silence may continue to function economically, but it will steadily exhaust its moral core. Migrant workers are already part of Korean society. To deny this is not a failure of law but a failure of vision. And unless that vision changes, Korea risks remaining not a truly global nation, but a socially isolated one within the global world.
A professional educator in Seoul, Park Myung-kwan examines the intersection of humanities and modern education.