Fajar points to his contract with the Indonesian dispatch agency. On July 21, 2026, he fell from the eighth story of a model in Busan’s Sasang District while attempting to break free. He owed US0. (courtesy Busan Foreign Residents Center)
Editor’s note: For the sake of the victim’s anonymity, a pseudonym has been used in this article.Last month, an Indonesian man rappelled down a rope made of blankets from the eighth floor of a motel in Busan in an attempt to make a break for his freedom. On Wednesday, he was officially designated a victim of human trafficking, becoming the first seafarer to officially receive this status in Korea since a law for preventing human trafficking and protecting victims took effect in 2023.The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family paid a visit to Busan on July 27 to review the criminal probe into the victim’s alleged confinement at a motel and subsequent fall, as well as his condition at a hospital. Six days earlier, on July 21, Fajar, 32, was injured while trying to escape through a window from an eighth-floor motel room where he was being held against his will. But at least Fajar escaped with his life. A 25-year-old man who had followed Fajar on his daring escape was killed after falling from midway down the building and landing on his head. The incident exposed the complex network of illegal worker dispatch and hiring arrangements in Busan, appalling working conditions of crew on deep-sea fishing vessels, and human rights abuses committed under the pretext of preventing desertion, laying bare the city’s status as a stopover for human trafficking.The ministry confirmed that Fajar’s case met the designation requirements for human trafficking for purposes of transportation, confinement or exploitation. It also moved swiftly to confirm his classification as a victim based on the police investigation instead of a case adjudication committee meeting, which takes time.“This is the first time a seafarer — domestic or foreign — has been designated a victim since the Act on the Prevention of Human Trafficking and Protection, etc. of Victims Thereof took effect,” said Park Jeong-sik, the head of the ministry’s violence prevention education division.Over the past three years, Korea’s government has confirmed 91 victims of human trafficking, with foreign victims (75) overwhelmingly outnumbering domestic ones (16). The number of victims also shot up from just 3 in the law’s first year of implementation to 42 last year, with 34 confirmed this year as of Wednesday. This data reflects both the initial lack of a victim identification system and the recent surge in seasonal workers, a designation held by 37 of the 75 foreign victims.By type of abuse, labor exploitation accounted for the lion’s share with 64 (70%) of the 91 victims, followed by sexual exploitation (23) and a mixture of the two (4). Fajar is among the 21 victims of labor exploitation this year.
