Immigration Office seeks to certify interpreters for refugees

Syrian asylum seekers wait for a call from the Korean justice ministry's immigration inspectors at Incheon International Airport in November 2015. Korea Times

By Ko Dong-hwan

The Ministry of Justice is seeking a group of skillful interpreters to facilitate communication between asylum seekers and Korean authorities. The ministry said it will certify those who are selected as professional interpreters specialized for asylum seekers.

The refugee division under the ministry's Korea Immigration Service said they will accept candidates from May 16 to 27. Eligible applicants include Korean nationals fluent in interpreting or translating foreign languages as well as those of other nationalities who can fluently interpret or translate one language or more into English or Korean.

Selected applicants go through an online interview process and those who are selected will receive further education. Those who complete the training will sit for a final examination. The finalists will then be certified as interpreters dedicated to serving refugees in the country.

The ministry first introduced the interpreter certification program last year to secure a dedicated workforce that might help the authority evaluate asylum seekers to decide whether to grant them refugee status in the country. The authority certified 160 interpreters in 2021, the immigration service told The Korea Times.

Since 1994, over 74,000 people have sought asylum in South Korea. Most of them (over 17,000) sought asylum to flee from religious persecution in their home countries, and over 13,000 sought asylum because of fears of persecution for political reasons in their home countries. Their identities as members of particular social groups, ethnicities or nationalities were also among the major reasons they fled their countries of origin.

As of March of this year, over 6,800 people were waiting for their refugee applications to be processed, and over 4,100 applicants had requested for their previously rejected applications to be reevaluated. Between January and March of this year, 1,640 asylum seekers were interviewed, and only 24 of them were granted refugee status, with the rest having been rejected.

Uzbekistan nationals accounted for the highest number of asylum seekers between January and March of this year with 122, followed by Chinese (93), Myanmarese (54) and Egyptian (52) national applicants.

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