10% of female migrant workers face rape, sexual harassment

One in 10 female migrant workers in South Korea has been raped or subjected to sexual harassment, a report said Monday.

The findings by the Korea Support Center for Foreign Workers and MNTV, an Internet broadcasting company for migrant workers, showed that 10.7 percent of the 1,218 people polled said they were victims of sexual abuse.

Of the 975 male and 205 female workers surveyed, 22 women and 15 men claimed they were abused or harassed at their workplaces by their Korean employers or co-workers, they said.

Of the women, 88.9 percent claimed that employers abused them, with 56.4 percent saying they did not report the incident due to feeling shame or because they could not express themselves to authorities in Korean properly.

Without giving data, the support center said that there was a rise in sexual harassment cases compared to before. 

The latest poll, meanwhile, showed that 83.3 percent of those migrant workers lived in homes provided by their employers.

(Yonhap News)