By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter

Busan City announced plans Wednesday to create a multilingual Web site for foreign workers and multicultural families in order to facilitate their settlement in Korea.

The city will use 20 million won to fund the site that will be launched in mid-September in Korean, English, Chinese and Vietnamese.

According to the local administration, the site will provide useful guides for education, child care, transportation and welfare services, and introduce major policies for assisting multicultural families and immigrant communities.

The site will also contain an emergency help menu, it said.

Once the multilingual Web site is launched, foreign residents will be able to get all the settlement information they need regardless of their Korean language proficiency.

The site will also offer news from their native countries and serve as an online gathering of immigrant communities by national origin.

Currently, there are 7,280 multicultural couples residing in Busan. The number of multicultural family members in the city is estimated at 10,300, including children.

The largest immigrant community comes from China, with 2,490 residents. Ethnic Koreans from China is the second largest with 1,790 residents, followed by 1,330 Vietnamese, 556 Taiwanese and 393 Filipinos.

The site will especially come in handy for those who have been denied useful information due the lack of Korean language ability and help them better adapt to our society, a city official said.

jhdo@koreatimes.co.kr