The town of Gimhae boasts a Filipino football team and a book club run by immigrant brides
in South Korea, like their counterparts in other countries, are not known for a great variety of culinary offerings. Lunch options are typically stew, noodles or barbecue. Not so in Gimhae, a sprawling city of 550,000 in the far south of the country. A stroll around the old market area takes visitors past Thai supermarkets, Vietnamese coffee shops and Burmese, Cambodian and Indonesian restaurants.
The aim of the new work permits was not just to reduce labour shortages for menial work, but also to ensure that those who arrived had certain rights and protections, says Ms Chun. Over the past decade the number of foreigners living in the country has nearly doubled, from 1.2m in 2009 to 2.4m in 2018, according to official data, out of a total population of 52m.
South Gyeongsang, the province in which Gimhae is located, has the highest concentration of foreign residents outside the capital region. In Gimhae just over 5% of the local population is not South Korean, much more than in other provincial towns. Most of the foreign labourers work for the many small suppliers to the local carmaking and shipbuilding industries.
On a weekday morning South Korean passers-by are vastly outnumbered by those from other parts of Asia, a rarity in a country that is usually striking for its homogeneity. A local shopkeeper says nearly all of his customers are foreigners. He has staff from several countries to offer sales advice in multiple languages. The town also boasts a Filipino football team and a book club run by immigrant brides, which meets in Ms Chun’s support centre every weekend.
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