As South Korea’s classrooms grow increasingly diverse, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education is launching a new interpretation service to protect the rights of multicultural students, many of whom face heightened vulnerability in schools due to language barriers.
Starting this month, the Seoul Eastern District Office of Education will provide real-time interpretation support in 18 languages to support multicultural students involved in school violence investigations.
The move comes as multicultural students, including newly arrived migrants and foreign nationals, represented 7.93 percent of the student body in the eastern Seoul region as of 2024. While the total number of students in Seoul continues to decline due to low birth rates, the proportion of multicultural students is on the rise, bringing new challenges to the education system, particularly in handling disciplinary or legal matters such as bullying and violations of teacher authority.
Recognizing the need to protect the rights of these students, the education office has partnered with family centers in Seoul's Dongdaemun-gu and Jungnang-gu to create a community-based interpreter network. This “community interpretation pool” will provide on-demand translation services in 18 languages, including Vietnamese, Russian, Uzbek, Mandarin, Thai, Turkish and Tagalog.
The initiative will support the right of students to give testimony and defend themselves fairly in school violence or teacher abuse cases. The partnership agreement also outlines the assignment of interpreters for fair case handling and conflict-of-interest provisions. The education office says it will also open employment pathways for immigrants who have completed community interpretation training, supporting social integration.
“This is the time for education offices to join hands with local communities to ensure no student’s rights are obstructed by language,” said Lee Mi-kyung, head of the Seoul Eastern District Office of Education.
“We will work to share the results of this initiative with other districts and push for it to be institutionalized.”
Multicultural students have been shown to be particularly vulnerable to school violence. Data from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family show that in 2021, 2.3 percent of multicultural students reported experiencing school violence — more than twice the rate of the overall student population at 1.1 percent.
jychoi@heraldcorp.com
