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Concerns are growing over the lack of clarity in the job description for caregivers from the Philippines who will start working at households in Seoul as early as September for Korea's pilot project.

For the six-month pilot program, the Korean government plans to bring in 100 caregivers from the Philippines to assess the feasibility of importing care workers from overseas.

Advocates of the rights and welfare of laborers and migrant workers said that the lack of clarity in the project's scope of work could lead to confusion between user-households and the care workers, which could also result in exploitation of those workers.

The concerns originally stem from differences in the terms between the two countries referring to these workers.

When the Korean word used in the government's announcement of the pilot project is translated literally into English, it is more like domestic workers or domestic helpers. But in the Philippines, the job is called "caregivers."

The Philippine Embassy in Seoul said in an email sent to The Korea Times, “The appropriate term is caregivers, not domestic helpers, as there are technical and legal differences between the two categories of employment under Philippine Law.”

The embassy underscored the differences between the two as types of employment along with the skills, training and certification.

This discrepancy in terminology could cause the misinterpretation of the roles of the care workers, as the notion for domestic work may include cleaning, cooking and laundry, among others, while caregiving could be limited to child care or older adult care services.

Minister of Employment and Labor Lee Jung-sik explained that the responsibilities of the 100 care workers, who will arrive in Korea from the Philippines soon, will be centered mostly on caregiving, in accordance with the agreement between the two governments.

He then acknowledged that different terms referring to the job could potentially become sources of conflict.

Minister of Employment and Labor Lee Jung-sik speaks during an interview with a group of reporters at a hotel in Geneva, June 11. Joint Press Corps

“Although the roles are defined as caregiving, there could be more incidentals in reality,” Lee said during an interview with a group of reporters in Geneva, June 11.

“So, we agreed with the Philippine government that these caregivers mainly provide caregiving assistance in addition to light household management activities related to this. We will continue to guide companies, tasked with supplying and managing these caregivers, in that direction. But conflicts could still erupt.”

A senior official from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of Korea's two largest umbrella unions, said there are too many concerns not only over the discrepancy in terminology but also over unclear descriptions of the caregivers' working hours and accommodation.

“Many countermeasures seem to be necessary. We are currently in talks with unions in the Philippines to jointly issue a statement calling for improvements to the pilot program,” she said.

Migration Forum in Asia, a Philippines-based nongovernmental organization comprising academia, journalists, lawyers and rights advocates said the Korean government should define the scope of work caregivers in the contracts for the pilot project, ensuring that the foreign workers are not subjected to exploitation or underpayment.

“The scope of work should differentiate between caregivers and domestic workers. The contract should also specify minimum and maximum hours of work for caregivers,” the organization said in a statement posted on its website.

It also urged the Korean government to develop a more comprehensive and equitable approach to addressing the need for caregiving services in Korea.