By KUNA,
Tokyo : South Korea has decided to suspend its visa waiver agreement with Bangladesh next month because most visitors who come under the program become illegal residents, local media reported Monday.
The new measure will take effect on July 15, the South Korean Justice Ministry said, according to Seoul’s Yonhap News Agency.
The two countries signed and ratified the visa exemption treaty in 1983, allowing their citizens to visit the other country for up to 90 days without a visa on condition that they do not work there. But most of the visitors from Bangladesh who arrived in South Korea under the treaty have overstayed their allowed period of stay, it said.
Among the 4,503 Bangladesh citizens who visited the country under the program last year, 96 percent of them, or 4,333 people, became illegal residents, it said. The illegal residency rate was consistently high in recent years, with 96 percent in 2004 and 95 percent in 2006.
“This measure was an unavoidable one in consideration of the fact that the illegal residency rate of Bangladesh citizens here has been significantly high. We will keep a close eye on the trend in order to later decide over (possible) resumption of the visa waiver treaty,” the ministry said in a statement.
About 13,000 Bangladesh people were residing in South Korea as of last year, and 80 percent of them were staying illegally, according to the news agency.
About one million alien workers, mostly from China, Vietnam and the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, reside in South Korea, generally holding low-paying, labor-intensive jobs in and around industrial complexes.
Roughly 229,000, or 23 percent, of such migrant workers are here illegally, it said.