Guro-gu Assigns Professional Interpreters to Community Service Centers with High Foreign Resident Concentrations

Guro-gu, the first autonomous district in Seoul to provide civil complaint interpretation services at three community service centers: Guro 2-dong, Guro 4-dong, and Garibong-dong

Guro-gu (Mayor Moon Heon-il) will deploy professional interpreters at community service centers in areas with high concentrations of foreigners starting this year. This is the first initiative of its kind among Seoul's autonomous districts.

According to the district, as of the end of December 2022, 10.57% of the total residents in Guro-gu are foreign nationals, of which 97% are of Chinese descent. The administrative demand from foreign residents has also been steadily increasing.

Accordingly, starting this year, the district will assign personnel proficient in both Korean and Chinese to community service centers with many Chinese residents to provide civil complaint interpretation services.

The purpose is to improve the difficulties foreign residents face in daily life and to ensure they do not experience inconvenience when using administrative services.

The civil complaint interpretation services are provided at three community service centers: Guro 2-dong, Guro 4-dong, and Garibong-dong.

At the end of last month, the district completed hiring three professionals fluent in both Korean and Chinese, and began operations on the 2nd of this month.

The interpreters reside at the community service centers for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. Interpretation services are available from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Guro 2-dong and Guro 4-dong, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Garibong-dong.

The district plans to consider expanding working hours and the number of personnel in the future.

A Guro-gu official stated, “This project is part of Guro-gu’s core philosophy of the 8th elected term, ‘Warm Companionship.’ We hope it will help foreign residents who have faced difficulties in the civil complaint process due to communication barriers.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.