By Park Ji-won
With the June 13 local elections about two weeks away, some foreign residents with voting rights are still having difficulty getting information about candidates because of the language barrier.
The National Election Commission (NEC) has been running an official foreign language website, but they are poorly managed with few updates; they are virtually useless for foreign voters who cannot speak Korean.
From May 27 to 29, foreign residents with suffrage need to visit their local community center or government website for their city, county or district, to confirm whether they are listed as eligible voters and how to find their polling station. Foreigners who find their names missing should ask the center to include them during this period. Otherwise, they might lose the chance to vote.
However, there is no such crucial information on the NEC's official website in English. Rather, there is almost no updated information about candidates running for the elections.
The latest news update on the site is dated April 26 and is lacking in practical voting information; it is about the NEC's moves to enhance ties with Twitter. Meanwhile, in Korean, people can find their name online and see posters at bus stops and near community centers reminding them to check their names are on the voting list. Needless to say, there is no such news in other languages.
There are ways to get updated information about voting procedures in other languages such as English, Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese, but it can only be found on a random page of a Korean website called “election information for the elderly and handicapped.”
Even that page doesn't include information about candidates.
In 2005, South Korea gave foreign residents in South Korea who have held F-5 permanent residence visas for more than three years the right to vote in local elections. To be specific, currently the minimum qualification for an F-5 visa is grade 2 in a Korean language efficiency test; this level is allegedly not enough to get voting information in Korean.
Eligible foreign voters can vote for chiefs of provinces and cities, local assemblies and superintendents of education. On Jeju Island, permanent residents even have the right to run for election as education superintendent, according to the NEC.
The number of eligible foreign voters reached 48,428 in the last local elections in 2014. That number is expected to rise this year as more people have moved to Korea compared to 2014.
The government's move to give foreigners voting rights was controversial, but took effect anyway, which is unheard of for an Asia country where there are not many immigrants compared to the U.S. and Canada.
It is the government's obligation to provide adequate information for voters. It might not be their problem if there is no such law to give foreigners voting rights. But as far as there are eligible voters who can't rely on information in Korean, the government should make efforts to distribute information through various channels, such as the foreign-language pages the NEC currently operates.
Uploading it only on Korean websites in hard-to-find spots cannot be considered the best way to inform foreign voters.
Needless to say, the lives of residents, even foreign ones, can change based on who runs local communities. That's one of the reasons foreign permanent residents have the right to select their local representatives. In that sense, the government should provide more information on its official websites in foreign languages, especially concurrent information about candidates.
The NEC cannot make excuses that the number of foreign voters is too small for operating the foreign language website properly as the Seoul city government provides up-to-date information in at least six languages.
As more diverse people are living in Korea, voting rights should be guaranteed and backed with enough information.