A foreign delivery rider affiliated with a delivery agency in Gwangju was penalized for violating immigration law earlier this year, but the business operator was not, raising questions over how the rider had been able to work.
According to reports by local news agency News1 on Wednesday, a Vietnamese national who worked for the delivery agency was apprehended by the Gwangju Immigration Office in January for violating the Immigration Act.
The rider was fined 2 million won ($1,444), while no separate action was taken against the company.
The case has drawn attention because foreign nationals working illegally as delivery riders typically require access to delivery platform accounts, raising questions over how the rider obtained an account to carry out deliveries.
Another foreign national who previously worked for the same delivery agency said the company provided foreign riders with delivery accounts registered under Korean names in exchange for payments.
He also claimed the agency collected higher delivery fees from foreign riders than from Korean riders.
If verified, such arrangements could indicate that the company played an active role in enabling foreign nationals to work, according to the report.
The Justice Ministry's nationwide crackdown earlier this year also found cases in which business operators helped foreign nationals work illegally as delivery riders.
During an intensive crackdown from January to May, authorities caught 16 business owners who had provided delivery platform accounts to foreign riders. The owners were found to have received money for lending out accounts or taken a portion of riders' delivery fees.
The Gwangju Immigration Office, however, said in a statement that all 14 foreign delivery riders it had caught since January had worked independently without a direct employment relationship with any particular business.
The office's findings differed from patterns identified in enforcement cases elsewhere, where business owners were found to have enabled foreign riders to work through account sharing and fee arrangements.
An official from the Gwangju Immigration Office said proving an employment relationship without a confession requires specific evidence that can be difficult to obtain.
"It is realistically difficult to secure concrete evidence proving an employment relationship between a business and a foreign rider without a confession," the official said.
seungku99@heraldcorp.com