...Qatar and Cambodia originally endorsed the plan in 2008, the same year as it signed an agreement to send workers to nearby Kuwait.

Bunny of the Labour Ministry said five companies had been granted licences to send workers to the two countries in recent months, adding that the firms would not be allowed to send the workers they recruit until a formal agreement was reached.

One firm, KCTC Manpower Supply, a Korean-owned company, has already begun its recruitment process. Its website says it plays a “vital role to improve [workers’] standard of living and helps employees to build up a bright future”.

KCTC chairwoman Yoon Dong Soo could not be reached, and a company representative at the firm’s Seoul head office declined to comment.

“Whatever the company does to recruit workers right now is not wrong, but they must be careful not to promise workers to give them a job in the short term,” the Labour Ministry’s Bunny said...