By Bay City News
For nearly two years, Tae Sook Park says she worked 13 to 14 hours per day, seven days per week for Deputy Consul General Bong Kil Shin and his wife, Mee Sook Shin, of the Korean Consulate in San Francisco. Her pay: $300 to $500 per month, well below federal and state requirements for minimum wage.
Now, Park, 51, is suing the couple in federal court for minimum wage and overtime pay. The federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour and the state minimum was $5.75 during Park’s employment, according to the lawsuit. If Park worked 13.5 hours per week for a four-week month, she should have earned approximately $2,077 before taxes.
But Bong Kil Shin denied the accusations. He said he was “very much disappointed” to find himself facing what he believes to be groundless accusations in the American legal system. “I did nothing wrong,” he said.
The suit, filed in San Francisco on May 9, also contends that Park was “enslaved” when her employers allegedly confiscated her passport and that they have still refused to return it.
Park, who was born in China and is of Korean descent, now lives in Los Angeles, according to her attorney, Hina Shah of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco.
The lawsuit says that Park started working for the couple when Shin was stationed at the Korean Embassy in Beijing, China, in 1996. After Shin was transferred to San Francisco, Park obtained a passport and joined the family in February 1999.
Park says in the lawsuit that she lived with the Shins at their home in Millbrae, where she cooked, cleaned, took care of their three sons and did extra work when the couple entertained. The suit says she worked from 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and from 8 a.m. on weekends until 10 p.m. every day. She left on Oct. 3 after being fired a week earlier, according to the lawsuit.
Shim said Park was like a member of the family and that the lawsuit contained “absurd and groundless accusations.”
Shin said Park worked only two or three hours per day cooking dinner in addition to helping Mrs. Shin with housecleaning once or twice a week. He said Park accompanied the family to concerts and movies. Park asked him to keep her passport because she feared losing it, according to Shim.
“We didn’t treat her as a housekeeper. We were family for a long time,” the deputy consul general said.
Shin said the couple and Park had agreed she would work for the family for two years. He said Park “simply disappeared” in October 2000, leaving a short thank-you note, and the Shins worried about what had happened to her. Two months later, they heard from a workers’ rights group in Los Angeles seeking back pay for her, Shin said.
The lawsuit is based on claims of failure to pay minimum wage, failure to pay overtime, failure to provide itemized wage statements, wrongful possession of Park’s passport, false imprisonment, infliction of emotional distress and unfair business practices.
It asked the court to order compensation for unpaid minimum wages and overtime premiums as well as punitive damages.
Shah said, “The trafficking of workers across borders for purposes of labor exploitation is a growing problem in the United Sttes. It is particularly egregious that a Korean government official is engaging in this behavior.”
The attorney said Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, a nonprofit community organization in Los Angeles, brought the case to the attention of the Asian Law Caucus and is collaborating on the lawsuit. |
