Starting in August, the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) will support job seekers' participation in e-learning (internet-based distance training), jointly with the Federation of Korea e-Learning Companies (FOECOM) and the Korea e-Learning Industry Association (KeLIA), Korea's two biggest employers' organizations related to e-learning.
* FOECOM is an employers' organization that consists of 19 members including companies running e-learning programs, such as LG, Samsung and Hanwha, and educational institutions specializing in e-learning, such as Credu and Ubion.
* KeLIA is an employers' organization whose members are professional e-learning providers and businesses in the e-learning industry, including platforms and contents.
This year e-learning courses will be provided mainly in such fields as business administration, accounting and information and communications where there is a high preference for e-learning. In those fields, 46 training courses will be offered in August, and the number will be increased to 100 by the end of this year.
In particular, some of the courses will be online versions of popular courses that are run by private educational institutes, etc., in Seoul and its surrounding region.
As a result, job seekers not living in the capital area will be able to take such courses without coming to Seoul. This would ease their cost burden and help narrow the training gap between different regions.
In addition to providing training courses, FOECOM and KeLIA offer course participants online employment counseling and employment materials and various other services, such as connecting job seekers to private recruitment firms.
A job seeker who wants to take an e-learning course should log onto the designated website (www.jobgo.ne.kr, www.daumjob.com) after receiving a learning card issued by a job center of MOEL.
A job seeker who has completed a training course will be eligible to receive subsidy to cover 50~100% of his/her course fees up to 2 million won.
Park Sung-hee, the Director-General of the Skills Development Policy Bureau, said, "There has been a training gap between capital and non-capital areas. However, excellent training courses available only in the capital area will now be offered online, which is expected to help reduce the training gap between regions."
"Most of training courses provided to job seekers last 6~7 hours a day, so it has not been easy for them to engage in job-seeking activities during training," she said, "With e-learning not constrained by time, it would be much easier for job seekers to receive training while looking for jobs."
*Government press release (August 22)