Minister Helps Ease Migrant Workers' Burden.

(From Korea Times)

When the flames were leaping out of the oven, Ozzy (who didn't want his full name used) was wearing only shorts and a vest. He wasn't quick enough to jump away. The color of his skin shows where the protection of the clothes ended. Scars over scars are the sad memories of burnt skin.

The accident occurred nearly one year ago, but it was only last Sunday that Ozzy showed parts of his body to the staff of the Migrant Workers' House in Songnam, Kyonggi Province, to get help in receiving worker's compensation.

``What kind of treatment did you get? Do you know the name and the address of the company where it happened?![+ or -] Lee Sang-rin asked him, as his colleague Joerg Baruth passed the appropriate form to him to be filled out with Ozzy's case history. The story the two church workers hear is nothing new to them, but still hard to believe. It is one of the frequent, bitter stories illegal migrant workers tell from their life here.

There are an estimated 350,000 undocumented migrants in the country, from such countries as Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mongolia, China and Russia. The largest number is ethnic Koreans from China, but the numbers of migrants coming from South America and Africa are on the rise. Since South Korea joined the world's industrialized countries it has had to face the side effects and cope with them.

Ozzy's home is in Anambra, a state in the east of Nigeria. He arrived here in May last year to feed his family back home: three brothers, four sisters, his mother and his wife. Without his salary they would have to starve. ``Korea is great for working, it took me only one week to get a job,'' Ozzy said. But the job was tough and unsafe: for 12 hours a day, six days a week he had to light a fire in an oven so that a saline solution could be turned into dried salt and packed for sale.

After his accident the company's manager took him to the hospital, but there was no insurance for Ozzy. To save money, the manager just asked for advice from the doctor, who cut off some blisters and skin hanging down from the wounds. ``I could hardly stand the pain,'' the Nigerian recalled of that day, ``but all he did was put aloe lotion on it.''