By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education is seeking to to recruit approximately 600 university students from English-speaking countries as paid interns this year. Those selected for the program will teach students in cooperation with Korean teachers at elementary and secondary schools in the province.

It will be the first-ever program for foreign college students to teach English in regular classes. So far, only graduates were eligible for the positions.

``Some foreign students have to give up their university studies due to financial difficulties. We will invite those young English-speaking foreigners to our schools for the program,'' Hwang Ik-jung, an official at the education office, told The Korea Times. ``It is very helpful for our country as those students can be emissaries for Korea in the future.''

The Gyeonggi education office's program is different from the central government's recruitment of native speakers who have completed more than two years of their college course for English teacher assistant jobs.

Participants in the internship will receive benefits such as round-trip airfare and allowances of about 1.6 million won ($1,548) per month, as well as a monthly accommodation allowance. The office has set aside roughly 8.4 billion won for the internship project.

Gyeonggi education office overseas the nation's largest number of schools. It runs some 2,000 elementary and secondary schools accommodating more than 1.87 million students and 83,786 teachers.

Currently, a total of 1,113 native English-speaking teachers have been placed at schools in the province. The education authority plans to place at least one foreign teacher in each school by 2010.

Gyeonggi is aggressively inviting more foreigners to build up an English-friendly environment at schools. Apart from the internship project, it will employ English-speaking workers from India and the Philippines in school cafeterias and libraries as part of an ``English Zone.'' The education office aims to hire some 75 workers this year.

Additionally, it will employ foreigners from countries where English is used as the official language when the government eases immigration regulations at the end of the year.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr