MOLEG - gateway to legal information for foreigners in Korea

By Hwang Sang-cheol

Statutory Information Policy Officer

The Ministry of Government Legislation (MOLEG) is the central administrative agency which is responsible for control and coordination of the government’s legislative affairs, reviewing and drafting legislative bills, and statutory interpretation.

MOLEG, since the establishment of the Korean Government in 1948, has been at the forefront of the establishment of constitutionalism, and has played a significant role in building a legal and institutional foundation to ensure Korea’s rapid economic growth.

Apart from these affairs, MOLEG has made great efforts to disseminate a tremendous amount of legal information including the current laws, judicial precedents, municipal ordinances and municipal rules among others to the people.

MOLEG, as a sole official codifier, has been compiling, publishing and disseminating Korean Statutes Books for over half a century.

However, since a lot of information technology gadgets have been released on the market, thereby changing people’s life patterns, MOLEG is eagerly endeavoring to extend the means of disseminating legal information to smartphones, e-Books, not to mention the Internet, in order to meet the needs of the people, and to generate interest among the young generation.

MOLEG has already been servicing legal information through the Internet since 2000, and from this February, has been providing mobile legal services to enable people to retrieve a total of 250,000 items of legal information free from the constraints of time and space through smartphones.

Moreover, the ministry plans to launch a legal information service for e-Book platforms from the latter half of this year.

These various kinds of legal information services are not confined just to the Korean people.

MOLEG also provides information services in English (https://oneclick.law.go.kr) for foreign residents lest they suffer from disadvantages of not having enough knowledge on Korean laws.

The easy legal information service for foreigner is in 6 categories - 1) foreign investors, 2) foreign workers’ employment, 3) foreign students, 4) interracial marriages, 5) transportation/driving, and 6) overseas Koreans - which contain the most necessary legal information.

The content therein will be extended every year.

MOLEG is also responsible for translating Korean laws into English. Now about 600 laws, which are closely related to everyday life, have been translated into English and provided through the ministry’s Internet homepage (https://www.moleg.go.kr/english/).

At this time, these translations are serviced by text versions, however, MOLEG plans to develop highly advanced retrieval system this year to enable foreign residents to search for legal information in English by inputting related terms or provisions.

Furthermore, MOLEG intends to provide the English legal services through smart phones, e-Books in the same way that legal information in Korean is distributed.

MOLEG will take every measure to encompass foreign residents as a main consumer of Korean laws, and appropriately cope with the social reality of a multi-ethnic society.