130,000 Vietnamese Workers Overseas This Year... Korea Ranks Third Most Destination

A Vietnamese seasonal worker crushing tangerine trees. Photo by Yonhap News

This year, 136,000 Vietnamese workers have been dispatched overseas, with South Korea receiving the third largest number, sending about 10,000 workers.

On the 14th (local time), the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported that the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs of Vietnam announced that from January to October this year, 136,40 workers were dispatched overseas.

The Vietnamese government has already exceeded by about 4% the initial plan to send 125,000 workers abroad under agreements with foreign countries this year. The Ministry explained that the active dispatch of workers overseas is due to countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, which have historically hired many Vietnamese workers, continuing this trend steadily.

In fact, Japan employed 62,722 Vietnamese workers (48.0%), followed by Taiwan (48,533 workers, 37.2%), and South Korea (10,877 workers, 8.3%). In addition, Vietnamese workers were dispatched to countries such as China (1,920 workers), Singapore (1,774 workers), and Romania (824 workers).

The Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs also stated that they are expanding the target countries to European labor markets, which offer higher income jobs than the existing labor market. By gender, female workers accounted for 40,139, representing 31.4%. The Vietnamese government has recently introduced various measures to expand and stabilize the overseas labor market.