Lawmakers, labor scholars and civic activists hold a debate session on introducing foreign care givers at below the legal minimum wage at the National Assembly in Seoul, Thursday. Newsis

Korea needs to improve the working conditions of domestic care workers and implant state-led initiatives to tackle future shortages of caregivers, instead of introducing foreign workers at below the legal minimum wage, labor experts said, Thursday.

"In Korea, care labor is a type of profession that is the most needed yet underappreciated and socially unrecognized," Cho Hyuk-jin, a researcher at the Korea Labor Institute, said during a debate session hosted by the two major umbrella unions, scholars and labor activists at the National Assembly in Seoul.

The debate session came amid ongoing discussions on a government-led initiative to introduce foreign care laborers amid the demographic crisis, as suggested by a recent report by the Bank of Korea (BOK).

According to the BOK report, Korea will face a critical shortage of 1.55 million workers to take care of older adults, the sick and children by 2042 due to an aging society and increasing number of young, working couples.

The report suggested "alleviating the financial burden" of care workers that Koreans face by introducing foreign workers and exempting them from the minimum wage system.

Cho pointed out that the country is experiencing a shortage of care workers due to poor working conditions, in terms of the nature of contract, wage level and social perceptions.

Under such inadequate conditions, Korean workers fail to recognize and commit to caregiving as a full-time, lifelong career. As a result, caregivers experience job insecurity, while care receivers have to bear with low quality of services.

"Without fundamental improvements in the working conditions of caregivers, neither Korean nor foreign nationals will be unable to continue working here," the researcher said.

Cho suggested reforming the care labor governance to include workers in the decision-making process and introducing a new pay system where those who provide care of higher intensity are paid more.

Notably, Cho pointed out the widespread devaluation of care work in Korea, where many wrongly perceive it as an expected role and responsibility of female family members.

"As long as there is a social perception that caregiving issue can be solved with the cheap labor of middle-aged women, there cannot be a fundamental solution to the problem," Cho said, adding that unstable and unsustainable working conditions cause domestic caregivers to leave the labor market.

Also, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, which were cited in the BOK report as examples of neighboring countries that introduced the policy, have different labor law systems and lack public caregiving systems.

Yang Nan-joo, a professor at the Department of Social Welfare at Daegu University mirrored Cho's view, underscoring the BOK suggestion is "not only far from solving the problem but also a retrogressive idea that degrades the country's public caregiving system."

The professor said labor shortage is unavoidable at its current status, referring to the 2022 government survey, where 72.9 percent of nursing facilities in Korea experience difficulties in staffing and the top reason was the "low cost of labor."