Prek Achi Commune families send kids to South Korea, where about 54,000 Cambodians have found jobs that pay well
In 2015, Vin Dyna, then 21 years old, was struggling with the combined study load of his high school curriculum and private Korean language classes.
He turned to his mother, Horm Seang, for advice, and she recalled how she did not have to think long about her answer.
“He asked me whether to drop the Khmer or Korean classes — I told him to go for Korean class and then he passed the test,” Horm, 54, said, adding that she had encouraged her son to start Korean classes a few years earlier.
“I saw many people [in my neighborhood] going to work in South Korea. We were poor, so I decided to ask him to go to work there,” the mother of five told VOA Khmer during an interview in Prek Achi Commune, an impoverished town in a rural region in central Cambodia’s Kampong Cham Province.
Vin dropped out of high school at grade 11, but reached his goal of working in a car-parts factory in South Korea. And for almost three years now, he’s been part of Cambodia’s small army of migrant workers who leave home to support their families.
He sends home almost $1,000 per month, Horm said proudly, a large amount of money for a family living on a 3-acre farm in an area with few other jobs.
Nationwide, the per capita income in Cambodia is an estimated $4,000 annually, according to the CIA World Factbook. By comparison, the per capita income in South Korea is an estimated $39,500, according to the Factbook.
Vin’s remittances have helped pay off $3,000 in loans that his mother took out to cover his Korean classes and his travel to South Korea, she said, adding that the family has been able to save about $10,000 and spend $7,000 on renovating their home.
Dependent on South Korea
Iv Lyhov, the commune chief of Prek Achi, said the migration to South Korea began several years ago after several local youths found jobs there and word of the good incomes spread. Then people started swapping advice on how to migrate, and one young worker followed another.
“Villagers see that other families who sent their children to South Korea have improved their living conditions, so they start doing the same,” said Iv, adding that his daughter and several nephews and nieces have all worked there.
“Many [migrants] are youths and villagers who have one or two children. Some dropped out of school” to learn Korean, he said.
They are among the hundreds of thousands of rural Cambodians, often between 20 to 40 years old, who leave their villages for other countries or the capital Phnom Penh in search of a decent income for their families.
Internal and external economic migration have grown despite Cambodia’s robust economic expansion in recent years. Rural areas lag behind because of a lack of development and growing indebtedness, according to researchers.
Often, labor migration is a struggle. There are the risks of being cheated out of wages or abused, as well as the emotional cost of separation.
While Vin’s migration has been a financial success, it has been bittersweet for his family.
“His father blames me for him going there.
