The government on the 22nd decided not to move forward with a full-scale rollout of the "foreign housekeeper" program that Seoul City has been piloting.
The foreign housekeeper program is a system that uses the Employment Permit System's non-skilled work visa (E-9) to hire workers to care for children in dual-income, single-parent, or multi-child households and help with housework.
Proposed by Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, Seoul City has been operating it on a pilot basis since September last year. The city selected 100 housekeepers with professional certificates from the Philippines and placed them in Korean households. The city had also said it would increase the number to 1,200 this year.
However, controversy over high expenses arose from the start. With the minimum wage, the four mandatory social insurance programs, and service operation costs combined, households would have to pay 2,923,200 won per month based on eight hours a day, which was said to be a burden. Critics said it did not align with the original intent of "allowing the use of foreign nannies at a cheap price."
In addition, two housekeepers deserted their posts and disappeared without notice just two weeks after deployment. They were caught at a lodging facility in Korea.
The government said, "To ensure that existing housekeepers can work stably, we decided to apply the same measures as E-9 workers, including extensions of employment periods."