Ten foreigners who had been illegally working at a golf resort on Jeju have been deported. The golf resort was raided on March 12 and the owner was fined for employing the undocumented workers.

This isn’t the first time that golf courses on Jeju have been central to an undocumented migrant workers scandal. Last year, two golf courses and a landscaping company (link in Korean) were charged with illegally employing 360 Chinese workers between April and May last year. In this case, the workers were thought to have received 120,000 won per day’s work.

On Jeju the construction, manufacturing, and agriculture sectors rely on foreign workers - sometimes illegally. However, over the last year, the government has been cracking down on undocumented workers earning a living on the living.

In fact, statistics from the Jeju Immigration Office say that in 2017, 6,218 people were found to have been staying on the island illegally. This is a huge increase from the 632 people that found to be staying on the island illegally in 2013.

Earlier in the year, Jeju opened a new foreign workers counseling center on the island, it is hoped that the center will build a social safety net as well as improve the rights and benefits of foreigners working legally on Jeju.