Migrant Fishers Bear Recruitment Debts as South Korea Faces Scrutiny Over Fees and Enforcement

Workers pay costs that contracts assign to agencies

A Vietnamese fisher paid $1,800 in management charges within a $4,900 recruitment bill. An Indonesian fisher, Abdurohim, prepaid four years and 10 months of management fees, yet his contract ended two months after he arrived in South Korea. He did not recover the unused portion.

Those cases expose a central problem in South Korea's recruitment system for migrant fishing crews: contracts can assign a charge to an overseas agency while the worker ultimately supplies the money. The management charge, capped at 45,000 won per fisher each month, is contractually payable by the overseas recruitment agency to its Korean counterpart. Investigations nevertheless found it included in bills charged to fishers.

The National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives, known as Suhyup, says it never instructed agencies to pass these costs to workers and has introduced reforms. The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries acknowledges that improvements have been insufficient and that money flowing from fishers through overseas agencies to Korean agencies presents a problem. It also says its ability to supervise activity abroad is limited.

The stakes extend beyond disputed accounting. Recruitment debts, deposits that workers risk losing if they leave, and pressure on agencies to prevent departures can make it harder for fishers to escape abusive employment. Foreign workers now account for more than half of crews on Korean fishing boats, three decades after 18 foreign industrial trainees first boarded them in 1996.

The evidence spans two distinct sectors: coastal and offshore vessels operating around Korea, and distant water fleets fishing far overseas. Their recruitment arrangements and protection measures differ. Promises made for one sector should not be mistaken for protections already operating across both.

A recruitment chain with conflicting incentives

For coastal and offshore fishing boats of at least 20 tons, the recruitment chain runs from the fisheries ministry to Suhyup, then to Korean receiving agencies and overseas recruiting agencies. Approximately 10,000 foreign fishers work on these boats, representing more than half of foreign fishing crews.

Eighteen Korean agencies hold contracts with Suhyup to supply and manage these workers. Their responsibilities extend beyond job placement to wage disputes, transfers between boats, immigration paperwork and responses when workers leave their assigned employment. Suhyup represents fisheries cooperatives whose members include the boat owners employing the crews, while also administering the recruitment system delegated by government.

The agencies must deposit 30 million won with Suhyup as a performance guarantee. Unpaid wages and losses associated with worker departures can be deducted from it. Agencies also bear an arrival training charge of 210,000 won per fisher, alongside transport, accommodation and other administrative expenses.

Their stated monthly revenue is up to 45,000 won per worker from the overseas agency and 10,000 won from the boat owner. That totals 55,000 won, or 5.5 million won for 100 fishers, before operating expenses. The owner contribution has reportedly remained unchanged since 2008.

This arrangement places extensive obligations on small private businesses without resolving who ultimately finances them. It does not excuse unlawful charges or coercion. It does, however, explain why examining agency contracts and actual money transfers matters as much as checking whether a fee schedule formally complies with the rules.

Fee declarations do not establish who paid

Article 111 of the Seafarers Act prohibits people engaged in seafarer recruitment, hiring and management from receiving related money or benefits from seafarers. Whether particular charges breach that provision requires investigation, but the documented management payments challenge the claim that contractual wording alone protects workers.

In the Vietnamese case, the $1,800 management component represented about 37% of the $4,900 recruitment bill. Abdurohim's advance payment covered 58 months, although his employment ended after two. Without a refund, the financial burden continued after the job disappeared.

Suhyup says recruitment cost statements can mix amounts owed by workers and agencies. It also says a revised form distinguishes the responsible payer. However, it did not produce a completed example demonstrating that separation, and a September 2026 statement examined during the investigation still included management costs within recruitment expenses without a field distinguishing who should pay.

Suhyup acknowledges that checking the overseas agencies' accounting records is difficult. Its assertion that agencies paid the charges therefore rests on the contract rather than verified evidence of where the money originated.

The recruitment ceiling itself also warrants scrutiny. Statements broke the $4,900 total into 13 categories. Individual category amounts differed between agencies, yet the totals all reached the ceiling. That pattern does not by itself establish wrongdoing, but it leaves unresolved whether the ceiling reflects documented costs or functions as a standard price charged to workers.

An audit recommendation without a funding change

A 2020 comprehensive audit by the fisheries ministry recommended considering a different way to finance management and education expenses effectively borne by foreign crews. Boat owners, Suhyup and the national government would share support for those costs.

Five years later, the underlying allocation had not changed. Suhyup said the audit finding had been resolved through a new contract clause allowing termination of a management agency's agreement if a Seafarers Act violation was established.

That was an enforcement measure, not the financing change the audit proposed. A clause permitting termination after an offence does not provide money for management services or prevent agencies from collecting that money from workers in the first place.

Suhyup subsequently said it lacked sufficient funds, found it difficult to shift expenses to owners and had received no national funding from the ministry. Management costs continued to appear in recruitment bills paid by fishers, without support from Suhyup or the state.

A debt statement for an Indonesian fisher illustrates the scale of the burden. Of approximately 12.5 million won owed, roughly 11.38 million won was listed as Korean processing expenses and a deposit intended to prevent departure. Those two categories accounted for about 91% of the recorded debt.

Keeping workers aboard carries commercial rewards

Suhyup's agency evaluation assigns 40 of 100 points to the rate at which workers leave their assigned employment. A detected human rights violation carries a deduction of two points per incident. Agencies ranked last for two consecutive years face contract termination and exclusion from bidding for three years.

The scoring makes worker retention a major determinant of future recruitment allocations and business survival. Suhyup defends the focus on departure rates and the usefulness of agency management, but did not explain why it retained that weighting.

A criminal case demonstrates the danger of turning retention into a private enforcement task. In 2022, employees of a receiving agency confined three Indonesian fishers for three days after locating them following their departure from their boats. A court convicted the employees of aggravated confinement and identified avoiding disadvantages in Suhyup's evaluation as their motive.

The National Human Rights Commission had warned about that risk on July 26, 2021. Its decision recommended removing relevant provisions from recruitment management rules and improving working conditions rather than compelling agencies to track down departed workers. Five years later, the provisions were reported to remain unchanged.

These pressures operate alongside difficult work. Accounts from fishers describe delayed wages, dangerous weather, long hours and exhaustion. For the coastal boats at issue, working time and rest provisions under the Seafarers Act are excluded from application to fishing vessels. The 10 hours of daily rest promised under a separate distant water initiative should therefore not be assumed to cover these workers.

Deposits persist despite bans and contractual powers

The fisheries ministry regards deposits intended to prevent workers leaving as conduct that may involve trafficking or forced labour and says it strictly prohibits them. The investigation also describes a Vietnamese legal allowance for deposits of approximately 2 million won, with higher amounts violating that country's rules. This distinction requires checking both the applicable national law and the Korean recruitment arrangement, rather than treating every payment labelled a deposit as legally identical.

Workers repeatedly told ministry surveys that they had paid deposits. Yet ministry documents indicated that agencies were difficult to remove without receipts or other supporting evidence. Cash transactions often leave little documentation, placing workers at a disadvantage when asked to prove what they paid.

An arrival declaration used by Suhyup included Indonesian wording meaning that deposits were excluded from the stated recruitment costs. That wording could be understood as allowing deposits outside the fee ceiling. Suhyup says it instructed agencies to remove the phrase from 2024, but changing a form does not establish that collection stopped. A 2025 loan record still listed a departure prevention deposit.

Suhyup also said it had lacked grounds before August 2025 to sanction Korean agencies dealing with overseas firms that collected excessive charges or deposits. A 2021 contract, however, already allowed recruitment allocation restrictions or contract termination when an overseas partner exceeded cost limits. The 2025 provisions specified sanction levels more precisely; they did not create the first authority to act.

No Korean receiving agency was sanctioned between 2021 and 2025 for improper recruitment charges or deposits. The ministry says it will investigate documentary evidence submitted to it, leaving a substantial part of the evidentiary burden on workers and those assisting them.

The distant water plan shows uneven implementation

On March 29, 2024, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced its migrant fisher protection plan, developed with Advocates for Public Interest Law, the Environmental Justice Foundation and the distant water fishing industry. It expressly makes distant water fishing companies responsible for all recruitment costs and prohibits illegal recruitment charges and guarantee deposits.

The plan requires tuna longliners to call at a port within one year of departure. It provides for at least 10 hours of daily rest, including six consecutive hours, individual passport storage, and an anonymous reporting platform at the Korea Seafarers' Welfare & Employment Center.

Kang Do-Hyung, then minister of oceans and fisheries, described the government's commitment when announcing the plan:

(the Ministry) will closely monitor the implementation of the Plan aimed at improving the working conditions of migrant fishers, and strengthening the protection of their rights, and will strive to ensure that all seafarers work in a safe environment without any discrimination.

The U.S. State Department's 2026 trafficking report records measurable progress on port calls. Forty six vessels complied in 2025, compared with 14 in 2024, an increase of 32 and more than three times the earlier count. Three vessels received reduced catch quotas for failing to comply.

The same report says the government did not report applying the plan's recruitment fee sanctions against distant water vessel owners. Port call enforcement therefore advanced while evidence of equivalent action on recruitment costs was absent. The ministry estimated an additional port call cost of 170 million won per vessel, showing that substantial operational changes can be required when enforcement is attached to fishing allocations.

Recognition of trafficking trails reports of abuse

South Korea retained Tier 1 status in the U.S. assessment, meaning it met minimum standards for eliminating trafficking. That designation coexists with serious weaknesses in fishing. The report says authorities had never prosecuted a trafficking case involving distant water fishing and reported no identified forced labour victims in the fishing industry during its reporting period.

It records a standard migrant fisher recruitment fee of about $4,900, with some workers paying up to $13,500, and allegations that agencies pressured workers to provide false information about fees. Across labour cases investigated by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, 87 of 89 were closed without legal violations being found. That figure is not limited to fishing and should not be presented as a fishing sector prosecution rate.

The fisheries ministry reported 17 onboard distant water inspections, three involving maritime labour union observers, and 43 surprise coastal inspections. Two fines of 1 million won were imposed on owners for retaining six fishers' passports. Inspection activity alone does not establish that workers were screened effectively for trafficking or received protection.

A later development complicates the picture. In August 2026, the surviving Indonesian fisher from a July 21 escape attempt at a Busan motel was reportedly recognised as an official trafficking victim, described as the first from a fishing boat. Two men had tried to escape confinement from an eighth floor window using tied bedsheets. One died; the survivor suffered a broken leg.

The reported August recognition and the U.S. finding of no identified fishing victims refer to different points in the record. The recognition should not be erased, nor should it be treated as evidence that earlier failures in identification had been resolved.

On September 2, 2026, the fisheries ministry and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced revised trafficking guidelines covering warning signs such as untreated injuries, confiscated phones and restricted internet access. The guidelines are not law. Lee Han-sook, director of the Migration and Human Rights Institute, stressed that application matters:

In the end, what matters is how we apply the [anti-trafficking] guidelines,

Reform requires financing, protection and a timetable

The major milestones show how long the same problems have persisted:

• 2020: A fisheries ministry audit recommended considering shared support for management and education costs borne by workers.
• July 26, 2021: The National Human Rights Commission recommended removing provisions that encouraged aggressive departure prevention.
• 2022: Agency employees confined three Indonesian fishers and were convicted of aggravated confinement.
• January 1, 2023: The Act on Prevention of Human Trafficking and Protection of Victims took effect.
• March 29, 2024: The ministry announced new protections for distant water crews.
• August and September 2026: A fishing worker received reported trafficking victim recognition, followed by revised sector guidelines.

A regional civil society consultation's October 2023 ASEAN policy proposal identifies the same recruitment risk: fees and deposits can bind workers to debt, while poorly enforced bans and new lending schemes can preserve exploitation. It calls for employers to pay recruitment costs, verified agencies, public access to agency information and sanctions for actors convicted of trafficking and forced labour. It is a proposal, not an adopted ASEAN legal requirement.

Workforce policy also matters. A 2023 fisheries employment study analysed responses from 147 boat owners and data on their 499 migrant employees. It found that foreign fishers struggled to reach the minimum points needed to change visa status under the Skilled Worker Points System. It proposed changes to skilled worker arrangements and expansion of regional visa pilots.

Those findings distinguish retaining skilled workers through viable employment and immigration options from retaining them through financial penalties. Government data published in July 2026 put migrants at 80.5% of distant water crews, illustrating how heavily that fleet depends on workers whose ability to report abuse needs protection.

Suhyup now proposes a government led public recruitment and management system, and the ministry says it will strengthen public responsibility. Similar proposals have circulated since 2021. Neither has supplied a concrete implementation date or method. The unresolved decisions are who will pay management costs, how actual payments will be verified, and how workers can report coercion without losing safety or lawful status.

The Bottom Line

• Management charges assigned to overseas agencies appeared in recruitment bills paid by fishers.
• A 2020 audit proposed shared financial support, but the cost allocation remained unchanged five years later.
• Suhyup gives worker departure rates 40 of 100 evaluation points, compared with a two point deduction per detected rights violation.
• Contracts contained sanction powers by 2021, yet no receiving agency was sanctioned for improper fees or deposits between 2021 and 2025.
• Distant water port call compliance rose from 14 vessels in 2024 to 46 in 2025; recruitment fee sanctions were not reported as implemented.
• New trafficking guidelines and a reported victim recognition in 2026 mark developments, but no timetable has been announced for public recruitment management.