Seoul in turmoil as seen by Central Asian migrants

On the bitter clash triggered by President Yoon's attempt to proclaim martial law, Radio Azattyk has gathered the opinions of Kazakhs who (with or without papers) are lacorating in the Korean capital. In their voices the hope that a change in the country's leadership will make life easier for them too.

Astana (AsiaNews) - South Korea, which has been in a rather turbulent phase politically and socially for days, is a popular destination for Central Asian migrants, who come here for work and study, and many of them have told Radio Azattyk how they see the evolving situation in the far eastern country.

President Yoon Suk-yeol's decision to declare martial law on 3 December, which was then withdrawn after a few hours due to parliament's rejection, led to a series of demonstrations, strikes and protests, and to the arrest of Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who attempted to commit suicide in prison, while the president himself is at risk of impeachment for abuse of power and other charges.

The 33-year-old Sanat Žusipbek, from the Turkestan region of Kazakhstan, has been in South Korea since 2017, living in the city of Gangneung a few hours' drive from the capital Seoul, where he often travels for business needs. At the time of the proclamation of martial law, he was at home, and friends from Seoul, who live in the migrant suburbs, told him they heard sounds of military helicopters over their heads. Some immediately advised people to return to Kazakhstan because of the scare, but the embassy did not issue any danger warnings.

As the Kazakhs noted, ‘Koreans have a very developed culture of public demonstrations, gathering on the streets without disturbances or vandalism, and even the police did not use truncheons, as is usually the case here’.

Like many of his compatriots, Sanat is a worker without a steady job, who at 5 am stands with his comrades on street corners, waiting to be called for some heavy work, managing to bring home an average of a hundred dollars a day, even if ‘empty days’ occur without work and without earning a penny. To these odd jobs he adds a few hours in a factory, always under the black economy, and these conditions make the migrants' lives full of apprehension, with the risk of being audited or falling ill without any kind of medical assistance.

With the unrest, controls on migrants and in general throughout the country have increased, and the Central Asian guests are also waiting for a change in the presidency, to make life in South Korea more acceptable, especially for working conditions. Yoon Suk-yeol is a former prosecutor, and his policy has always been rather punitive towards migrants, whom he himself described as ‘vermin who put one spoonful too many in the plate of Koreans’. In verification raids someone was always arrested and held in a cell for 10-15 days, treated with decidedly little respect, and many were repatriated.

On the other hand, the news from the homeland is not encouraging, with the devaluation of the tenge cascading with that of the rouble and price increases, which discourage people from returning home. Sanat assures that ‘with whoever comes to power in Seoul, we will continue to survive’, although it is unclear how migrants should behave when a revolution breaks out.

There are also legal migrants like Dias, also from Kazakhstan, who arrived in Seoul 10 months ago and is currently studying Korean language at university, paying over a thousand dollars every three months and supporting himself as a waiter, with a salary of ,500 a month.

When the commotion started, Dias reacted unperturbed. The boss only said that the shifts would end early because of the curfew, and not to walk around without identity papers. According to Dias, the political situation will have no particular influence on the lives of the migrants, at least those with papers in order, although ‘none of us imagined that such a commotion could break out’ in a country considered ‘safe and advanced’, compared to the habits of those in Central Asia.