A phone-based translation service offered to foreign residents by South Korea's financial authorities is incomplete and not that helpful, as it has no foreign language choices, service users complained Friday.

The Financial Supervisory Service launched the service earlier this week, publicizing that it's part of the government's efforts to minimize finance-related inconveniences.


The FSS said foreigners can dial 1332 to reach the agency's call center and use a "three-way" translation service, supported by the Justice Ministry's Immigration Contact Center. A total of 19 languages are available including English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Cambodian and Indonesian, it added.

However, foreigners should go through a quite lengthy and rather complicated prerecorded introduction of service menus, which is available only in Korean, to finally speak with South Korean consultants about what they need.

Those who want to use the service need to have a relatively good command of Korean, which means they may not need translation.

"One must know Korean pretty well to access it. It's an interesting case of perhaps an inadequate or incomplete government service - something like a half-built bridge," a foreign banker in Seoul told Yonhap News Agency.

FSS officials admitted the problem, belatedly saying the translation service is "designed largely for the members of multi-cultural families," many of whom speak Korean to some extent.

"We agree with the need for improving the service to extend help to more foreigners. We will review ways to address it," Choi Ok-soon, an FSS official in charge of operating the translation service, said.

She gave no clear answer to the opinion that a separate phone service channel for foreigners is necessary. (Yonhap)