The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology on Thursday announced the measures as part of a plan to give education support to students from multicultural families and of foreign workers. It is to cost some W70 billion (US$1=W1,382) from 2009 until 2012.

There will be a diagnostic language test for preschoolers from such families and supplementary education programs free of charge at nearby kindergartens three or four times a week. If they lack Korean-language skills even after they enter elementary school, they will be taught the language after school according to their level of proficiency.

The ministry devised the policy after complaints that the rising numbers of children from multicultural families often fail to adapt to school or society due to poverty, the language barrier and a general sense of alienation. In the overwhelming number of cases, the children are born to Korean fathers, often from low-income rural areas, and foreign-born mothers.

Such mothers will be given guidebooks about their children's school life in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Mongolian when each semester begins. They can consult their children's teachers through interpreters during a special week at the start of each semester.

Schools with many students from multicultural families will run classes to foster understanding of multi-ethnicity where foreign-born parents introduce their native cultures and customs.

According to the ministry, the number of elementary and secondary school students from multicultural families more than doubled to 20,180 in 2008 from 9,389 in 2006. More than half or 52.9 percent of families where the mother was born abroad earned incomes below the minimum cost of living.

(englishnews@chosun.com )