Migrant groups demanded equal access to health care, schools, and welfare ahead of South Korea's June 3 local elections, arguing the country profits from 2.8 million foreign residents while treating them as temporary guests.
The complaint matters because Korea leans on foreign labor to offset a shrinking workforce, yet still writes rules that assume migrants will go home.
One in five Koreans has now passed age 65, and the migrant population has climbed to 2.8 million, including roughly 170,000 to 180,000 multicultural families.
According to The Korea Times, activists said local governments collect taxes from migrants while shutting them out of many public services, such as the childcare subsidies and education support that remain out of reach in most localities.
Udaya Rai, head of the Migrants' Trade Union, said migrant workers deserve a voice in deciding each region's future.
Migrants without insurance often pay hospital rates three to ten times higher than standard prices, the newspaper reported.
Researchers at Monash University describe Korea as a multicultural society without multiculturalism, diverse in its people but not in its policies.
Part of the reason lies in attitudes: many immigrants face ostracism in a society that has long prized ethnic homogeneity, and the researchers note that xenophobia often goes unrecognized as racism.
“The undocumented migrant issue is the product of the avenues for lawful migrant labor being relatively narrow despite the ongoing domestic demand for workers,” explained Jeong Yeong-seop, an executive member with Alliance for Migrants Workers’ Equal Rights.
Foreign-born residents now make up 4.8 percent of Korea's population, a larger share than Japan's 3.2 percent.
Yet only 0.1 percent of migrant-related bills have passed the National Assembly, and the country still lacks a broad anti-discrimination law.
The Employment Permit System, Korea's main work-visa program, ties a migrant's right to stay directly to a single employer.
Weak political power helps explain why these rules rarely change.
Korea grants local voting rights to some permanent residents, the only country in Asia to do so, and a record 151,532 foreign voters qualified this year.
That number has grown from just 6,726 when the system started in 2006.
Even so, only 13.3 percent of eligible foreign voters cast ballots in 2022, as language barriers and thin outreach kept many away.
Lee Jae-mook, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, blamed the low turnout on weak interest in local politics and a widespread lack of awareness.
The gap between paper rights and daily life grows widest for workers without visas.
An estimated 400,000 undocumented migrants now work in Korea, many in small workplaces that struggle to find local hires, the Hankyoreh reported.
The government launched a task force in December 2025 to study letting some of them work legally, but disagreements between ministries have stalled the plan.
One proposal would split work permits into three levels and let skilled workers stay six years or longer.
Many workers lose legal status in the first place after fleeing abusive employers or unpaid wages, because the permit system makes changing jobs so hard.
Lee Cheol-seung, who heads a support center for foreign residents, noted that Korea deports about 30,000 people a year, while just as many become undocumented.
In contrast, Spain chose another path in January, opening legal status to undocumented workers, and more than 500,000 people have gained papers there.
Behind the statistics stand people who have spent most of their adult lives in Korea.
A June report presented at the National Assembly gathered the stories of ten migrants who have lived in Korea without legal status for 12 to 35 years.
One Pakistani father, given the pseudonym Amir, arrived in 1999 and later faced a 20 million won surgery bill for his newborn daughter because the family had no health insurance.
Another interviewee, a 58-year-old Filipino man called Chad, said he has never ridden the subway in 27 years of living in Korea for fear of arrest.
The report shows Chad has so far escaped deportation, but only by giving up daytime life: “I feel like I've had to live without sunshine, always in the dark of night,” he said.
Government figures counted 397,522 visa overstayers in 2024, and 81,206 of them faced deportation or orders to leave that year alone.
International monitors have raised the same alarms.
A United Nations committee urged Korea in May 2025 to criminalize hate speech and hate crimes after reviewing reports of abuse against migrants.
The same review found that migrant workers die in industrial accidents at roughly twice the rate of Korean nationals and often live in substandard housing.
Korea already works as a country of immigration in its factories, farms, and neighborhoods.
The unresolved question is whether Korean law will treat the people who sustain its economy as long-term members of the society they help run.
