Foreign seasonal workers participating in the Jeongseon Arirang Festival (Image provided by Jeongseon County).
SEOUL, June 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labor announced Saturday that it will accept applications for new employment permits for foreign workers from July 7 to 18 through local labor offices nationwide, as part of the country’s third-round quota for 2025.
A total of 18,054 foreign workers will be newly authorized under the Employment Permit System (EPS) across key industries, including manufacturing (13,062), shipbuilding (500), agriculture and livestock (1,878), fisheries (1,662), construction (356), and service (596). If labor shortages persist, authorities plan to tap into a reserve pool of roughly 32,000 flexible slots.
Starting with this round, EPS workers will also be allowed to take on food service hall roles and parcel sorting jobs—an expansion of permitted job categories finalized during last month’s 47th Foreign Workforce Policy Committee meeting.
A foreign worker handling employment permit procedures at an employment center in Seoul.
The EPS allows small and medium-sized enterprises that struggle to hire local labor to employ non-professional foreign workers with E-9 visas. Employers seeking to hire foreign labor must first make a week-long attempt to recruit domestic workers before submitting an application either in person at local employment offices or online via www.work24.go.kr.
Application results will be announced on August 4. Permit issuances will be processed from August 5–8 for manufacturing, shipbuilding, and mining sectors, and from August 11–14 for agriculture, fisheries, forestry, construction, and service sectors.
The expansion of permissible job categories reflects the government’s ongoing efforts to address persistent labor shortages in essential but understaffed sectors under President Lee Jae-myung’s pro-labor economic policy framework.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
