Illegal job brokers for Vietnamese students face prosecution in South Korea

The two Korean brokers, identified as 58-year-old Choi and 59-year-old Chung, were found to have offered part-time jobs in 13 companies, including hypermarkets and logistics warehouses, for 262 Vietnamese students registered at a university in Gyeonggi Province between November 2016 and August 2018.

Knowing that the group of Vietnamese students did not have work visas, the brokers took about 30 percent of their hourly wage as commission, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing Korean immigration officers.  

More than half of the Vietnamese students confessed to the immigration officials that they wanted jobs to pay their tuition fees.

Korean authorities are also investigating the university where the Vietnamese students were studying to clarify whether it was involved in the allegedly illegal job brokering.

The university allegedly provided free office space for the two brokers to recruit students, Yonhap reports.

Vietnamese students are the fastest growing group in South Korean universities, second only to China in enrollment numbers, according to figures from the National Institute for International Education under the Korean Ministry of Education.

Vietnam sent nearly 15,000 students to South Korea last year, three times higher than the number in 2015, making it the fastest growing market for international education in the Northeast Asian country.