While the 98 Filipina caregivers in Seoul city’s pilot program are protected under South Korea’s Labor Standards Act, Act on the Employment Improvement of Domestic Workers and statutory minimum wage, some government officials have been talking about making the project more like Hong Kong’s foreign domestic helper scheme. Some have said Korea should follow Hong Kong’s model and exclude foreign domestic workers from the minimum wage. Foreign caregivers here could be hired t

Fifty-one years ago, during Hong Kong's "golden era" of social reform, then-Gov. Murray MacLehose established a framework to bring in low-wage foreign workers for domestic and care work. This policy aimed to encourage educated, upper- and middle-class local women to enter the workforce — a rationale similar to that of the Seoul city government's foreign caregiver pilot program today. Though now facing different socioeconomic conditions, some South Korean politicians and