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By Jung Dae-ha, Gwangju correspondent

Gwangju is breaking ground on a support center to serve the city’s international population, including migrant workers and marriage migrants.

The city government announced on Jan. 2 that 1.6 billion won (US$1.5 million) had been allocated from the 2014 budget for building what is tentatively being called the Gwangju Migrant Workers’ Support Center, with funding from the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

With the central government granting this amount, the city plans to contribute its own 1.6 billion won from this year’s supplementary budget to cover the 3.2 billion won cost of building the center on 4,700 square meters of city land in the city’s Usan neighborhood.

The request for government funding stated that the facility be in a three-story building and with a medical center, small theater, multicultural cafe, counseling office, library, and education center.

As of Jan. 2013, Gwangju had a population of 22,300 international residents, including 6,400 migrant workers and numerous marriage migrants, ethnic Koreans from the former Soviet Union, and exchange students. The city now plans to set up a task force to discuss the center’s official name, specific projects, and the management methods with civic and social groups.

“What we have now is the groundwork for offering the full gamut of support to international residents,” said Oh Seung-jun, an officer for multicultural families in the city’s social services division. “We plan to discuss the details of the construction with the groups that have been pushing for the building of a general migrants’ support center.”

The decision was welcomed by a committee previously established by 12 groups, including the Gwangju Migrant Workers’ Clinic Center (GMWCC), to coordinate the center’s construction.

“The central government funding has made this center possible,” the committee said. Since June, the GMWCC and other groups have been offering free medical treatment to foreign workers in the area. The committee was established in Aug. 2013, and the groups staged a policy debate, meeting with Gwangju Mayor Kang Woon-tae to discuss building the center.

Based on its current plan, the center would provide human rights, health, and cultural services for migrant workers and other international residents.

Reverend Lee Cheol-woo, chairman of the Gwangju Migrant Workers’ Center, said plans were needed to fund human rights counseling, Korean language classes and other educational services, and to promote the medical center.

Seok Chang-won, a pastor with the Gwangju Migrant Workers’ Missionary Association, stressed the importance of “joining together to turn the center into a space of convergence so that foreign workers and other migrants don’t feel alienated.”

Fitting its social aims, the city and groups may discuss running the center as a social cooperative. A social cooperative is a type of non-profit organization with five or more parties contributing to provide social services, with establishment approval granted by a central government agency.

Lee Yong-bin, chairman of the GMWCC, said it was “also worth considering establishing a social cooperative and having the center commissioned so that the local community can join together in managing it.”

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