1. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness
While foundlings as well as children born to two stateless parents have safeguards in place to apply for citizenship of South Korea, the same cannot be said for children of undocumented migrants. With the lack of legal safeguards, risk of statelessness of children of undocumented migrants and out-of-wedlock relationships runs high as the consulate of the migrants in several cases, have refused to register births of their children due to the “unlawful” residential status of the parent.
2. Citizenship Stripping
Citizenship stripping has fundamentally affected foreign spouses within South Korea in instances where their marriage is determined to be a ‘sham’. Prior to 2010, South Korea did not allow for dual citizenship in any form, with marriage migrants having to relinquish citizenship prior to being naturalized in South Korea. A number of marriage migrants were subsequently stripped of their citizenship and rendered stateless within South Korea, with minimal to no avenues for review.
3. Administrative Barriers
While South Korea has reported a birth registration rate of 100% to the UN Statistics Division, birth registration in the country is only counted for citizens. The lack of inclusion of foreigners and non-citizens in legislation requiring birth registration places children born to foreign, undocumented, and stateless persons at risk of remaining unregistered, which may place them at risk of statelessness. In South Korea, foreigners, including undocumented and stateless persons, as well as single mothers experience low birth registration rates. As possession of family registration ‘is the core evidence to identify a person to be [a] national of [South Korea]’ barriers to children of migrants from being registered places children of undocumented migrants at a profound risk of statelessness. In June 2023, South Korea’s state audit agency discovered that 6,000 births in local hospitals were not reflected in birth registration records, of which two thirds were births of a foreign mother. The US Department of State has estimated that there may be as many as 20,000 children born to undocumented foreigners in South Korea who are unregistered. Currently, in order to register the birth of their child, foreigners in South Korea, including stateless persons, are unable to register the birth with the South Korean government and must instead register the birth at their respective embassy, which is not possible for stateless persons. There is currently no legislation mandating birth registration for non-citizens of South Korea, while it is required for citizens. Undocumented persons often avoid exposing their identity to their embassy, face “insurmountable administrative barriers”, or are simply denied registration by their embassy, leaving thousands of childrens’ births in South Korea unregistered.
A bill was proposed in August 2022 as well as June 2023 in order to address the gaps in legislation for registration of the births of foreign children, but has yet to move through to enactment. The Human Rights Committee has recommended that South Korea expedite the enactment of the Bill to ensure foreigners, stateless persons, and undocumented persons access to birth registration. However, a different bill, the Protected Birth Bill, was passed by the National Assembly as of October 2023 and will enter into force in July 2024. Despite criticism of its potential social implications, the Bill seeks to improve birth registration and better protect children by allowing anonymous births, adoption, and orphanage care as well as requiring medical institutions to report births to authorities within 14 days.
