Work permit system will benefit all

SEOUL: A few weeks ago, I met a foreign industrial trainee from an African country. I mentioned that for seven years in the 1980s, I taught many African students at a university in Washington, DC. They found it hard to adjust to life in the United States. 

He told me that nothing could compare with the “living hell” foreign industrial workers experience in South Korea's “snake pits” – the small and medium-size factories and construction companies that employ foreign industrial trainees as a cheap labour force to do the 3D jobs (dirty, difficult, and dangerous) that Koreans reject.