By Seoul to Offer Internships to Foreigners By Park Si-soo
Staff ReporterSeoul City Hall will take on 20 foreign students from 10 countries as interns from Monday until Feb.11.
The program, launched last year, was designed to help foreign students here develop career experience and promote Seoul’s global profile.
The students will be assigned to departments aiding foreigners.
That sounds like it could be a good idea. I think the time period is rather short, however, as described here: about a month. I would think just as the intern starts to know what they are doing, they’d be leaving…
But, these kinds of internships might go a small way to helping Korea if they put some thought into them.
I could see bringing in interns in the tourist sector as well. People involved in Korean or East Asian Studies or Hotel and Restaurant Management or other tourism related career field. Have them work two or three month or longer internships at places like primary tourist info centers frequented by foreigners – like the one in the subway near the US Embassy and Kyobo Bookstore. Also at major foreign tourist attractions – like the royal palaces.
I would think you could narrowly define the intern’s responsibilities, like having them as a greeter or getting them up to speed on a lot of information about one or two specific tourism items that they could inform customers about – or some other minor duties – that would be beneficial to all. For example, if you hired an intern at one of the historical museums or palace grounds, they could be in charge giving the set tour guide speech on one of the exhibits or sections of the palace grounds as the Korean tour guide handled a tour group through the remainder of the course. I could see other roles at the major tourist hotels.
Such programs could help better Korea’s profile by giving more career-related people positive exposure to the country. It could also help Koreans in those careers and offices gain positive experience with foreign nationals and beef up on their English.
It wouldn’t be a major factor, but I could see it being a continuous positive one worth the effort and money.
— Most of it would depend on treating it like a professional internship — not letting the bosses use the foreigners like slaves like in the hakwon industry — and — not just accepting anybody that fills out an application. Give the internships to people in career-related fields and treat them as valued employees.
