Early in the morning on Aug. 7, a letter was found in the factory dormitory of a parts manufacturer in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province. It was a suicide note written by Keshav Shrestha, a 27-yearold Nepali migrant worker who was found hanged on the dormitory’s roof that same morning.

(…) Shrestha arrived in South Korea in early 2016. He had been married for just three to four months. His wife and younger sister saw him off as he left Nepal. After finding work at a parts manufacturing factory, he worked for 19 months under a system of two day and night shifts of 12 hours each. But around three to four months ago, he began suffering severe insomnia. Around May, he changed his work pattern to only perform duties in the daytime. Still, he spent more and more nights wide awake.

(…) According to the Cheongju Migrant Workers’ Human Rights Center and the migrant worker shelter Cheongju Nepal Shelter, Shrestha met with company management staff twice last week. “I want to change workplaces. If that won’t work, I’d like to go to Nepal first for treatment and then come back and work for a different company,” he said. In response, the management staff proposed “moving the team.” When Shrestha refused, the staff told him he should go back to Nepal and instructed him to get a plane ticket there as part of procedure.

(…) News of Shrestha’s death spread to the outside when Sunita Pandey, the 40-year-old manager of Cheongju Nepal Shelter in North Chungcheong Province, translated the note into Korean and shared it on the Facebook page for Nepal with Safe, a Cheongju youth migrant worker human rights organization. “A person has died because of the employment permit system,” Nepal with Safe and Pandey wrote in the post.

(…) “Foreign workers subject to the employment permit system are institutionally prevented from changing workplaces as they wish without the permission of their employer, even if the company where they are now is not good,” they explained. The Act on the Employment, etc. of Foreign Workers restricts migrant workers as a rule from changing workplaces after entering South Korea through the employment permit system. A worker may change workplaces up to three times in three years, but only in exceptional cases. Workplace changes are allowed only in cases where the employer grants approval, or in exceptional instances such as nonpayment of wages and other Labor Standards Act violations by the employer. (…)

고한솔 기자, <한겨레> 2017-08-13, 기사
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