Medical translation available for migrants

외국인 근로자를 위한 의료통역서비스 실시


Beginning today, migrant workers will be able to receive the results of their health checkups in their native languages, the Labor Ministry said yesterday.
A foreign worker, who wants to get a detailed explanation on his or her medical examination, will also be able to talk to the medical staff with the help of a translator over the phone or through the internet, officials said.
The translation and interpretation service will be provided in 10 languages, including English, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Indonesian and Russian.
Under the law on industrial safety and health, migrant workers have received regular medical checkups, but complained of difficulty understanding the results written only in Korean.
As of March, about 470,000 migrant workers are registered here. Some 119 workers suffered job-related disease last year while 138 workers suffered disease related to their jobs in 2007, according to the ministry data.
Such a service is the first of its kind since the country introduced the Industrial Trainee System 16 years ago.
The ITS was introduced to teach foreign apprentices advanced technologies and to make up for the lack of manual workers at so-called "3-D" jobs - difficult, dangerous and dirty ones which most Korean natives shun. The system was abolished in 2007.