Labour Migration from Indonesia to South Korea: Challenges in Maximizing Potentials

Abstract

An analysis of why people migrate to work in another country is commonly conducted through a listing and description of the push and pull factors, with low income and high unemployment being the push factors and high income and low unemployment being the pull factors. It can be used to explain in general the reasons for temporary labour migration but not to explain why people choose to migrate to a certain country, instead of the others. This is the case of South Korea and Indonesia. There is still a number of Indonesian workers seeking for employment abroad, and there is also a high demand for foreign workers in South Korea. However, the number of Indonesians working in South Korea can still be considered small if compared to the numbers of Indonesians working in other countries in the region, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The assumption is that there are factors that hinder maximum impacts of this push and pull factors. This paper looked into these hindering factors which are mainly related to the high requirements from the South Korea side and the inability to fulfill the requirements from the Indonesia side. An understanding of these hindering factors may contribute to the efforts of increasing the number of Indonesians working in South Korea, which is considered as a reasonably safe country to work in.