my timesThe Korea Times
  1. South Korea

Korea’s most-populous province launches multilingual blitz to get foreign residents to vote

Listen
By Lee Kyung-min
  • Published KST
A promotional poster encouraging eligible foreign residents to take part in the June 3 local elections / Courtesy of Gyeonggi Province

A promotional poster encouraging eligible foreign residents to take part in the June 3 local elections / Courtesy of Gyeonggi Province

As Korea prepares for its upcoming local elections on June 3, Gyeonggi Province is launching an ambitious campaign to ensure its growing foreign population isn't left out of the democratic process.

In a bid to overcome language barriers and systemic information gaps, the provincial government announced the deployment of voter turnout posters translated into 13 different languages.

Under Korea’s Public Official Election Act, certain foreign residents hold the right to vote in local elections. Eligible voters must be at least 18 years old, have held permanent residency for at least three years and be officially registered on their local municipality's foreigner registry. Despite these legal rights, many eligible non-Korean residents sit out of elections due to a lack of accessible information in their native languages.

To bridge this gap, Gyeonggi Province’s Department of Immigration and Social Policy designed a highly visual, multilingual informational campaign. In addition to Korean, the promotional materials include languages such as English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Uzbek and Nepali. The posters provide essential voting details, including election day instructions, early voting schedules and the broader civic significance of participating in local governance.

The province plans to distribute these materials across a dense network of migrant support organizations, including welfare centers for foreign residents, multicultural family care centers and various grassroots migrant community groups and social media channels. Furthermore, the government said it will deploy its own networks, such as the Gyeonggi Foreign Resident Honorary Ambassadors and the Migrant Policy Public Relations Team, to drive on-the-ground, face-to-face awareness.

"Migrants are vital members of our society and residents living alongside us in the community," said Yoon Hyun-ok, head of the province's Immigration and Social Policy Department. "We will continue our multilingual guidance and outreach so that our foreign residents face no hurdles when participating in this election."

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.