By Park Si-soo
Stalenskaya Elena from Uzbekistan has lived in Ansan, an industrial city 30 kilometers southeast of Seoul, for 10 years. However it’s still a bit of an uneasy trip from her workplace to her home at night.
“I’m afraid to walk on a road leading to my home at night due to dim lighting,” Elena said, complaining about a lack of lampposts installed in the second largest expat community in South Korea. “So I usually take a taxi. Once arriving at home, I don’t leave it during the night.”
The 29-year-old said she had struggled to improve her proficiency in Korean with neither public nor private services offering language lessons in Ansan.
“When I first settled in this city, there was neither a public nor private service offering language lessons to foreigners,” she recounted. “This is not the case any longer. But among other problems not being addressed yet is the fact that Korean staffers speak no foreign languages, except for English, at ward offices and banks. Also official documents are available only in the two languages.”
Elena now serves as a Russian-Korean interpreter at a community center.
South Korea has become home to more than 1.2 million foreign nationals with the influx of immigrants from developing countries soaring in recent years. A total of 15 residential districts have more than 5 percent of their population made up of immigrants, statistics show.
Despite their growing presence, many expat communities here have long been neglected from state support aimed to upgrade living standards, consequently leaving their residential districts to be labeled as “dirty, risky and crime-prone” areas.
Last year, seven self-governing districts spent merely 180 million won ($165,000) upgrading the living environment of areas where non-Koreans are densely populated.
However, that’s insufficient. Mindful of this, the central government Monday unveiled a plan to improve the quality of life for expat communities.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Security said it will spend 3.2 billion won at 11 major expat communities to offer better welfare, security and in the long run to develop them as tourist attractions.
The 11 communities have either more than 100,000 foreign residents or more than 5 percent of their entire population made up of non-Korean nationals, the ministry said.
Among them are Yeongdeungpo and Itaewon in Seoul; Ansan and Siheung in Gyeonggi Province; and Changwon and Gimhae in South Gyeongsang Province.
The ministry will invest nearly 2 billion won to build public parks or other recreational and educational facilities. About 850 million will be used to switch street signs, mostly in Korean, into ones written in multiple languages.
The remaining budget was assigned to enhance public security by installing street lighting and surveillance cameras.
“The long negligence from state development projects left many expat communities dirty and dangerous where locals are hesitant to live. The latest plan is a fundamental measure to change it,” said Cho Doo-young, a director of the ministry. “We will develop them as tourist attractions in the long run.”
Cho also said the ministry will soon announce a long-term development plan for expat communities.