South Korea's Hottest Import: Foreign Workers

Article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/south-koreas-hottest-import-foreign-workers#r=nav-r-story

With the bulk South Korea's workforce becoming elderly, South Korea is in need of foreign workers to fill the holes left by domestic workers leaving the workforce. Instead of the problems we have discussed in class where the structure of the market causes unemployment (through either frictional unemployment due to problems finding or accessing jobs or through structural unemployment caused by policies such as minimum wage), the current situation in South Korea is resulting in the demand for workers being higher than the country's supply of workers. To remedy this Korea has been bringing in workers from other countries where they can earn approximately 20 to 25 times what their wage would be in their home country. Much like immigrant workers in the USA, these workers are sending a majority of their paycheck back home to their family so that they can live easier lives. However, the key difference here is that people are more accepting of immigrant work as opposed to those in the USA that want to construct barriers to keep workers out.