The death of a Vietnamese woman in Daegu after she reportedly tried to evade a South Korean immigration raid has intensified scrutiny on the country’s restrictive work visa rules for international students who graduate from local universities.
Vu Tu Anh, 25, died after falling three stories from an air-conditioning unit of a car parts factory where she had been working illegally, according to the Hankyoreh newspaper. She had hidden behind the unit as immigration officers cracked down on undocumented residents on October 28.
She was a graduate of Keimyung University, majoring in international trade. After successfully obtaining a D-10 job-seeking visa, she was trying to find work in her field but had not been successful.
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Under the D-10 visa, foreign graduates are permitted to engage in part-time work but only in limited professional fields and they are not allowed to do manual work, according to The Korea Herald newspaper. For full-time work, foreign applicants also have to find professional jobs to qualify for an E-7 skilled workers visa.
However, such jobs are difficult to find. To make ends meet, Vu was forced to work at the factory in Daegu, about 300km (186 miles) south of Seoul. But just two weeks into the job, the factory was raided by immigration officials.
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Her illegal work coincided with the Ministry of Justice’s stepped-up raids on undocumented residents ahead of the Apec world leaders’ summit at the end of October.