Foreigners with voting rights being ignored

Immigrants participate in a mock poll organized by an election office in Busan, Monday, in preparation for the June 13 local elections. / Yonhap

By Park Ji-won

In 2005, South Korea gave foreign permanent residents with F-5 visas the right to vote in local elections.

The upcoming June 13 local elections will be the fourth time for these people to exercise their voting rights since the law revision.

However, the government and the National Election Commission (NEC) are still failing to provide candidate information in other languages, virtually violating the voting rights of foreigners who cannot speak Korean, multiple sources claimed Monday.

Amid the growing influx of foreign workers and permanent residents in Korea, their rights have been expanded in recent years. However, they still have limited access to information about elections. Currently, Korean language proficiency is needed to get information about candidates and go through the voting process.

According to the election commission, it has no plans yet to upload information about the candidates in English. Their official website has an English page that gives information about the elections. Other than that, there are not enough sources to fully inform people about the candidates in other languages.

Meanwhile, the website gives real-time information about the candidates in Korean. The information includes basic data about the preliminary registered candidates for local elections such as their name, sex, birthday, occupation, education, party and career.

Some point out it is problematic to not provide information about candidates in other languages, saying it is a person's basic voting right to be informed about local election candidates.

“The government should provide candidate information in other languages because it allows foreigners to vote,” said a person with a Canadian passport who has spent five years in Korea without an F-5 visa.

“The language service doesn't have to be written in English, but, as the commission made the English service website, they should include updated information in the language about the candidates for voters. Even when we choose the chief of the apartment building, we are provided information about the candidates.”

However, some people insist the government doesn't need to provide information in foreign languages as permanent residents should learn the local language to exercise their voting right.

“The Korean model is an openly assimilation model, which means if you want to come here you have to learn our language. Until that model changes, it is going to be Korean language models. If I don't want to learn Korean, then I can't participate in life fully,” Jacco Zwetsloot, director of Business Innovation at HMP Law, who has voted in three Seoul mayoral elections, told The Korea Times.

However, he also pointed out the law is contradictory, saying the definition of political activities is very limited.

“The law is inconsistent, contradictory, confused and confusing about the precise nature of political activities. How can voting not be a political activity?” he said.

According to the Immigration Control Act, foreigners cannot engage in political activities including participating in political camps or holding placards about election candidates.

“Voting is surely a political activity. If I can vote, why can't I do other things? That law needs to be looked at first because either if you want a complete ban on political activity, then don't let foreigners vote. Or, if you let foreigners vote, then let foreigners participate fully in Korean politics,” Zwetsloot said.

For local elections held in June 2014, 48,428 foreigners had the right to vote. The number is expected to be larger this year as there are now more foreign permanent residents.

The number of foreign residents living in Korea is increasing in tandem with the rise in the number of all foreigners here, which was 2.18 million as of the end of last year, according to the justice ministry.