In a meeting held in Seoul last December, members of the “Foreign Worker Policy Committee” (FWPC) determined the “foreign workforce introduction and management plan 2017”. The committee is tasked to decide on important matters concerning the employment of foreign workers through the “Employment Permit System” or EPS.
For 2017, the Korean government through the FWPC decided to hire 56,000 EPS workers. This is a decrease of 2,000 from the previous year’s 58,000 workers.
The 56,000 has been decided based on:
42,000 (number of workers whose visa are due to expire) + 10,000 (number of workers needed to replace those illegally staying in Korea) + 4,000 (shortfall of workers)
This shall be composed of:
43,000 new EPS entrants
13,000 committed or sincere workers.
HRD Korea has announced that there will be no Special EPS-TOPIK for 2017. The last batch of Special EPS-TOPIK is the fourth batch of 2016.
The total number of 56,000 shall be composed of citizens of the 15 EPS sending countries that includes the Philippines. Out of the 56,000 about 30,000+ is for manufacturing. Filipino EPS workers can only work in manufacturing as agreed upon by both the South Korean and Philippine governments.
Workers are expected to enter Korea in January, April, July and October.
Source: http://www.moel.go.kr/english/poli/poliNewsnews_view.jsp?idx=1325
