The Republic of Korea is delaying allocation of quotas for migrant workers from Tajikistan. 

The reason is that our labor migrants violated the rules of stay in this country during the first organized recruitment of labor migrants in Tajikistan for working in South Korea.  

Based on a government-to-government agreement between Tajikistan and South Korea, the first group of Tajik labor migrants, numbering sixty people, traveled to the Republic of Korea on October 10, 2022.  It was the first official case of six-month labor migration of Tajik nationals to South Korea.  

The fate of the future agreement on recruitment of workers in Tajikistan for working in South Korea depended on the results of the first organized trip.  

However, the results were disappointing; twenty-eight Tajik migrant workers did not return to Tajikistan, preferring to work illegally.  

“This complicates the process of concluding an employment agreement with this country,” an official source at the Ministry of Labor, Migration and Employment of the Population told Asia-Plus in an interview Friday morning. 

“Therefore, Tajikistan is not included in the list of foreign countries, from which manpower is sent to South Korea.  However, we hope this issue will be resolved positively within  the next few days; the agreement has already been signed, you know,” the source said.  

According to him, the Ministry of Labor, Migration and Employment of the Population (MoLMEP) is currently working on introducing the employment permit system (EPS) for working in small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea.