Migrant workers face dire conditions at South Korean farms
The death of a Cambodian migrant worker has revived decades-long criticism of a system that advocates say exploits Asia’s most vulnerable people
By Kim Tong-hyung / AP, POCHEON, South Korea
“It’s a world of lawlessness,” the Reverend Kim Dal-sung muttered over the phone as he drove his tiny Kia over narrow dirt paths zigzagging through greenhouses made of plastic sheets and tubes.
In the bleak landscape of dull blue and gray in Pocheon, a town near South Korea’s ultra-modern capital, Seoul, hundreds of migrant workers from across Asia toil in harsh conditions, unprotected by labor laws, while doing the hardest, lowest-paid farm work most Koreans avoid.