By Park Si-soo
About 30 percent of restaurants on the nation's biggest resort island of Jeju hire foreigners without work visas, a survey showed on Wednesday.
The Korea Foodservice Industry Association and the Korea Foodservice Industry Research Institute interviewed 390 people running restaurants on the island and 30.3 percent, or 118, said their foreign employees did not have a work visa.
The ratio went up to 40.9 percent among small restaurants with floor sizes of less than 100 square meters. This indicates that these restaurants tend to hire unqualified foreigners to save money, people involved in the survey said.
Korea's minimum hourly wage is 7,530 won. Unqualified workers are usually paid less.
Survey sources cited "strict requirements" as another reason for restaurants avoiding hiring qualified people.
Under the Work Permit System, a legal framework regulating employment conditions for unskilled foreigners, restaurants need to have at least two Korean employees on their payrolls to win state permission to hire foreigners.
For Chinese restaurants, floor space of 200 square meters is a condition to hiring foreigners. It is 60 square meters for restaurants offering a "general menu."
Critics say the rule does not reflect the reality that most Jeju restaurants are single-staffed and hardly meet the floor space rule.