The survival of Korea’s rural economy now rests on a collective silence. In a pear orchard in Hanam, South Gyeongsang Province, the land my grandmother cultivated her entire life, that silence feels almost natural. There was a time when neighbors gathered to help one another with the harvest, sharing food and labor as a matter of course. That scene has faded into memory. The trees are still heavy with fruit, the fields as wide as ever, but the faces of those who work there have completely changed. Now they are migrant workers from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and beyond. Many of them live outside the law under the label of “undocumented.” They bend their backs at dawn, sustain orchards and factories under extreme heat, yet in the language of the state they do not exist. Korean society depends on them while simultaneously refusing to see them. They are necessary but unacknowledged—present in plain sight, yet socially erased. They are ghosts in the system. This contradiction is sustained not only by policy but by everyday attitudes. Ignorance about discrimination — and mo