8,000 workers planned to be dispatched to Korea this year…“Korean wages are the highest, higher than Japan’s.” Thousands of Vietnamese seeking to work in Korea, where wages are several times higher than in Vietnam, have flocked to the selection process for Korea’s foreign worker employment permit system.
According to local media VN Express on the 6th (local time), around 7,900 people attended the Korean language proficiency test held at a school in Hanoi as part of the selection process for Korea’s employment permit program.
According to the Overseas Labor Center under Vietnam’s Ministry of Interior, a total of 22,800 people applied for the process to select around 8,000 people to be dispatched to Korea through the employment permit system this year.
As of October last year, more than 650,000 Vietnamese workers were working in over 40 countries, remitting approximately 4 billion dollars (about 5.57 trillion won) annually to Vietnam. Among them, the income of Vietnamese workers in Korea stood at around 1,600 to 2,000 dollars per month, surpassing the second highest, Japan, which was between 1,200 to 1,500 dollars, according to a report by Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Vietnamese authorities reported that the number of Vietnamese workers employed in Korea through the foreign seasonal worker program increased significantly from 433 in 2022 to 2,157 last year. The program is gaining popularity locally as workers only need to pay for passports, visas, health checks, and airfare, with no intermediary fees, thus reducing the financial burden, the authorities explained.