[Anchor]

It has been revealed that a local government in Jeollabuk-do has been hoarding the passports of foreign seasonal workers en masse. While cases of employers or brokers seizing migrant workers' passports have frequently been reported, it is extremely rare for a local government itself to step in and withhold passports.

Reporter Jeong Banseok has more.

[Reporter]

A farm in Jeongeup, Jeollabuk-do.

Karen (a pseudonym), a seasonal worker who arrived from the Philippines in early May, submitted her passport to the Jeongeup city government on her first day in the country for alien registration and other procedures.

She had not received her passport back for over four months.

Our reporting team visited the city hall along with Karen.

The city responded that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with the local government in the Philippines included a clause regarding passport retention.

[Jeongeup City Official: The Philippines requested it. It is included in the MOU conditions.]

When asked to show the agreement, however, the official changed their statement, admitting that no such clause existed.

Instead, the official explained that because there had been many cases of seasonal workers leaving their workplaces in the past, they tried to prevent it.

[Jeongeup City Official: To prevent defection. Passports are needed when leaving the country, and we were keeping them safe here until then.]

Employers also chimed in.

[Employer: If she had her passport, wouldn't she have run away without a word? In the end, it was better to leave it with the city hall.]

Depriving individuals of their passports or refusing requests to return them is one of the key criteria used by the government to identify victims of human trafficking.

When an immigration investigator from the Ministry of Justice dispatched to the scene urged the return of the passports,

[Ministry of Justice Official: You need to hand over the passports now, you must hand them over.]

Only then did they bring out the passports stored somewhere.

There are approximately 160 seasonal workers who came to Jeongeup alongside Karen.

Jeongeup city conducted an inspection of the human rights conditions of seasonal workers in late May, but ironically, it was the city itself that was holding the workers' passports.

[Jeongeup City Official: I think if this worker had worked diligently, matters wouldn't have come this far.]

The human rights inspection guidelines established by the Ministry of Justice include an item asking whether seasonal workers have had their passports confiscated.

[Ko Gi-bok, Director of the Migration and Human Rights Culture Center for All: There is a (human rights condition) checklist. Just going through that checklist would show them how grave of a wrongdoing they are committing.]

Jeongeup city stated that they had retained the passports of about 60 workers due to administrative inexperience and returned all of them following SBS's reporting.

(Video Journalist: Shin So-young | Video Editing: Choi Hye-ran | Design: Han Heung-su)