human trafficking. Issue 9: Migrant Workers and Marriage Immigrants Current status 47. Although the Government states that it has made consistent efforts to prevent discrimination against and exploitation of foreign workers by refining the Employment Permit System (EPS), some observe that the latest changes made to the EPS rather have an effect of restricting the rights of migrant workers. For instance, the Ministry of Employment and Labour revised the ‘Guidelines on Foreign Workers’ Workplace Change’ in August 2012: before this revision, a migrant worker who wanted to change his/her workplace could obtain the list of available workplaces from the Job Centre and move to the workplace of his/her own choosing, but after the revision, the list of job-seeking migrant workers is offered to the employers who want to hire migrant workers while the list of available workplaces is not given to job-seeking migrant workers, so that migrant workers’ employment is totally dependent on the employers’ choice, which restricts migrant workers’ right to choose workplace. Furthermore, with the amendment of Article 13 of the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers, etc. in January 2014, migrant workers may receive the benefit of the insurance policy that their employers have contributed to in preparation for their retirement, no later than 14 days from the date of their departure from Korea, whereas, under the previous Act, they could receive the benefit no later than 14 days from the date of their retirement. This means that, in practice, migrant workers may not get their retirement insurance benefit while staying in Korea, which is feared to go against Article 36 of the Labour Standards Act which provides that an employer should settle wage, retirement pay and all the other monetary payments for his/her employee no later than 14 days from the date of the employee’s retirement. 48. According to the NHRCK’s ‘Survey on Human Rights Conditions of Migrant Workers in Fishing Industry’, it was found that many migrant workers in fishing industry were forced to pay an extremely high cost of recruitment before arriving in Korea and were exposed to human rights violations, such as seizure of their identifications, like passports, by their employers or agencies, overdue wage payment and linguistic and physical violence. However, some point out that migrant workers in fishing industry hardly benefit the remedies from the competent authorities when they suffer unfair treatment at workplace, such as exploitation, discrimination and overdue wage payment, because the Foreign Seafarer Scheme has been delegated to the private sector. 49. The NHRCK’s ‘Survey on Human Rights Conditions of Foreign Workers in Construction Industry’ revealed that 14.3% of foreign workers in construction did not sign a contract of employment before starting to work for their employer and the common practice of concluding an oral agreement or side agreement on the comprehensive (calculation) wage scheme at construction sites often worked against the migrant workers who were not familiar with the Korean language. 50. The Government states that it has arranged a legal foundation to permit marriage immigrants to continue to stay in Korea even after divorce so long as they have an unavoidable reason to stay here, and that it has relieved the marriage immigrants’ dependency on their Korean-national spouse for their sojourn status, by removing the legal requirement that marriage immigrants should submit their Korean-national spouse’s written guarantee when they apply for a permit of extended stay. However, the problem is that, in practice, divorced marriage immigrants may be permitted to stay for an additional period only when they prove that the divorce is due to a reason attributable to their spouse. In particular, in case a female marriage immigrant is divorced simply for a reason of her spouse’s change of mind, she fails to get a permit for extended stay 12 / 25