Non-Korean citizens working in Korea who may have once or twice experienced the inconvenience of a language barrier will most likely welcome the following announcement: many of the services offered by the government's Employment Permit System (EPS) for non-citizens will now available online in 16 languages, plus the original Korean.

This wider range of services for non-citizen workers in Korea, the EPS' "mother tongue services," was recently made available at the EPS website, announced the Korea Employment Information Service (KEIS). The EPS is a service that offers job information and other labor-related services required by both employees who are not Korean and their domestic employers.

With services now offered in 16 languages, plus Korean, a user can check online in their own native language a worker's job training background, work history in Korea and the status of any current applications. There is a dictionary of employment and labor terms, a FAQ section and even a list of jobs for which workers can apply, all offered in 16 languages, plus Korean.

Most services on the EPS website are now available in 16 languages for workers from the Philippines, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, China -- both simplified and traditional -- Bangladesh, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and East Timor. Up until now, many of the services, including some paperwork and registration procedures, were only available in Korean. This was a huge inconvenience to the workers at Korean companies whose mastery of Korean is not yet fluent. Very often, workers had to resort to visiting foreign worker centers or employment agencies simply to check on the current status of their application, for example.

Along with the new language services, the KEIS will continue to offer more services in more languages for the convenience of people who come to Korea to work, the agency said.

The services are available at the EPS websites, below.

www.eps.go.kr
m.eps.go.kr

By Chang Iou-chung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photo: Employment Permit System website
icchang@korea.kr