[Foreign Resident Center Opens]

One local autonomy opened the first Foreign Resident Center in Korea in Ansan city. Here, foreign residents will receive the same administrative services as Korean citizens.

Foreign Resident center opens at the ‘Village without Borders,’ a representative unit where many immigrants live.In addition to handling administrative services, for the welfare of the foreign residents, the center provides medical services including dentistry and Oriental medicine.

They even have a public health center. Until now, I had nowhere to take my kid to even when she got sick.

The call-center consultation office at this center will provide interpretation services in 20 different languages. Furthermore, the Korean language and computer classes will solve the language problems of foreign residents.

We need help when our employers do not pay us due wages. Now I expect that the center will…

The center provides foreign residents with the same quality of administrative services that Korean citizens enjoy. Most foreign residents work at factories so they only have time on their days off. Therefore, we decided to keep the center open year-round.

There are more than 1,000,000 foreign residents in Korea. 40,000 foreign residents who came to Korea for a job have become our friendly neighbors.

[Trust us with Your Child]

Working mothers would have less trouble raising their children if there were someone to look after the kids while they are at work. To aid such problems working moms are having, Gyeonggi province is enforcing the family nurture instructor policy.

Jeongyeon Lee, who lives in Suwon, feels relieved of the double burden of child raising and working a job, because the nurture instructor takes good care of her child while she is at work. Although the instructor’s wages cost more than a private babysitter, mothers can trust these professional instructors who all have in-depth knowledge and experience with raising children.

I am glad that there is someone to guide my child systematically according to his growing stages. Taewoo Kim who has a five month old child also applied for this policy for his wife.

We needed a facility that is trustworthy to take care of our child while we are at work. The instructor came over about a month ago and she is doing fine.

These professional nurture instructors all have five years or more experience and are certified through specialized courses. What makes them more credible as well is the insurance system that guarantees compensation for potential damage caused by an instructor.

The instructors treat the children from a professional perspective. They all have the basic qualifications regarding their views of education and philosophy that parents may demand.

The family nurture instructor policy acts as a key to solving problems related to the child care dilemma of working mothers.

[Traffic Congestion Solved]

Gyeonggi province’s traffic congestion has improved much. The traffic congestion section improvement business, which started operations from last year, is seemingly showing some results.

Gyeonggi province has been working on traffic congestion since last year on sections where the average speed is below 20 kilometers per hour.

According to the analysis of 35 sections that finished the reformation, the passing time has shortened. Thereby it resolved the congestion to a certain extent. The passing time through the intersection in front of Baek Hospital in Uijeongbu has shortened from five minutes to one minute.

The roads around Ansan station, where cars usually get held up, improved much by dividing the intersections into a cross country bus section, an express city bus section, and a taxi stand.

It is easier to get on the bus now. Before, the buses came in randomly and disorderly, but now it is much improved.

Meanwhile, there was a claim that more traffic specialists are needed in order to operate the improvement business more effectively.

[Expanding the Incentive Policy]

Gyeonggi province will offer various incentives to shipping companies that use Pyeongtaek Harbor. Gyeonggi province noticed that it will expand the incentive policy to cultivate Pyeongtaek harbor into a major physical distribution harbor around the Yellow sea.

Accordingly, shipping companies that handle container cargos at Pyeongtaek harbor will receive government subsidies and additional subsidies of up to 101,000 dollars if the companies’scale increases by more than 5% compared to a year earlier.

Additionally, the province will give a discount on landing charges to newly commissioned shipping companies.

Pyeongtaek harbor has been expanding in commercial traffic. We are giving out incentives to outrun Incheon harbor in the near future.The container traffic handled by Pyeongtaek Harbor increased by 22.7% from 261,000 in 2007, to 319,000 this year.

Gyeonggi province is going to complete the construction by the end of next year and appoint Pyeongtaek harbor as a free trade zone.

[Fusion technology is an Edge]

The‘Next generation Fusion Institute’was established to support competitive technology to improve on the ultimate competitive edge of companies.

The next generation institute opened its doors at the Gwanggyo Techno Valley, Gyeonggi province. Here, the combining different technologies, such as information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, will lead to the development of new technologies. It will generate a new industry, one that is value added.

This will be beneficial to some medium and small companies that lack the technical know how. The management of the Fusion Technology institute will be consigned to Seoul National University, and there will be 9 cutting edge laboratories moving in.

This upcoming September, SNU will add an MBA course to its graduate school of business administration, and establish the first graduate school of fusion technology in Korea.

[International Celebration!]

The Gyeonggi international boat show and yacht competition will open in Jeongok Harbor, Hwaseong city, this June. Gyeonggi province is going to prepare for the show thoroughly up until the opening day.

The Gyeonggi International Boat Show and the Korea Match Cup World yacht Competition, which is only 80 days away, is gradually showing itself.

The province decided to expedite arrangements for a successful hosting and announced a progress report. People are expecting this show to be an international event because of the scale and because of the fact that many global companies will be attending.

71 companies are definitely attending, and thirty are likely to attend. We are looking forward to inviting about 100 companies altogether. In addition well known yacht stars will be attending both competitions.

The locally-manufactured boats that will be introduced at the yacht show are almost finished and will be completed by the middle of this month.

[Open to Traffic from 2018]

Construction began on the second west coast highway, which will connect Siheung to Hoseong. It will greatly resolve traffic problems along the west coast.

The second west coast highway, which is under construction to resolve the traffic congestion of the existing west coast highway, will open for traffic by 2018.

The road will connect Siheung to West Pyeongtaek, and will cross the South Chungcheong area to Hongseong, a total 108.6 kilometers.
The ministry of land, transport and maritime affairs will first open the road connecting Siheung to Pyeongtaek by making use of private capital by 2013.

The new highway is expected to meet the needs of growing traffic and ease congestion along the west coast. The remaining section that connects Pyeongtaek to Hongseong will be constructed using a federal budget. After the feasibility study this year, construction will start from 2013 and finish by 2018.