Covid -19 and migrant workers in South Korea

THE government of Metropolitan Seoul and the provincial government of neighboring Gyeonggi-do, the most populous province of South Korea, issued an administrative order in March 2021 mandating the compulsory Covid-19 testing of all foreign workers in the city and province.

Forty-seven percent of the more than 1,700 foreign nationals who have tested positive for Covid-19 in 2021 alone are based in Gyeonggi province and 28 percent of them are in Seoul. The number of positive cases among foreigners as a share of total cases in Seoul rose alarmingly from 2.2 percent during the last two months of 2020 to 6.3 percent in the first two months of 2021. The figure also doubled for foreigners in Gyeonggi province during the same period.