On July 31st, Korean adoptee organization, GOA’L (Global Overseas Adoptee’s Link), hosted a seminar to introduce adoptees who were interested in acquiring dual citizenship to the details of the process, as well as both the advantages and disadvantages to reinstating their lost Korean citizenship, which will be possible beginning January 1st of next year.
On April 22, 2010, in order to buoy the Korea’s impeding population crisis and retain talented citizens that are being lost due to “brain drain”, the Korean National Assembly passed a revision to the Nationality Law that allows dual citizenship.
The inclusion of adoptees in the revised Nationality Law is thanks in large part to GOA’L’s “Dual Citizenship Campaign”, which began lobbying as early as the fall of 2007 to grant adoptees the right to dual citizenship. Cha, Kyu-Geun from the Ministry of Justice, Kim, Jung-Hwan, a National Assembly member who also sits on the GOA’L Board of Directors, and Dr. Lee, Chul-Woo, a professor at Yonsei University, were also instrumental to the process, working together with GOA’L to be included in the revisions.
Among the benefits of dual citizenship is the right to vote, run for public office, and also easier access to credit or financial services in Korea. Among the disadvantages is the loss of eligibility for scholarships aimed at foreign students, restricted access to foreign schools in Korea for those with families, and restricted access to embassies of their other nationality in Korea. Finally, for a number of cases of male adoptees under the age of 36 who still appear on their birth family’s hojuk, or family registry, some military service may be required. While they will not be forced to serve the normal two year term, they may be required to serve in “civil defense exercises” that Korean males typically continue once a year for seven years even after the completion of their military service.
Dae-won Wenger (43), an adoptee from Switzerland and former Secretary General of GOA’L says that one of the main reasons he will register for dual citizenship is to obtain more rights. Specifically, the right to run for public office, which says he is a possibility in the future. Wenger, who has been in Korea for 7 years and is fluent in his native French, as well as Korean and English, was a driving force behind the Dual Citizenship Campaign. “It’s a fundamental step in the improvement of adoptee rights…We didn’t have a choice. Having the right to choose now, I believe it’s a correction of the mistakes of the past. I think it’s an issue of human rights, to strip a person of their nationality without asking.” He also believes that adoptees’ inclusion in Korea’s Nationality Law revisions will have positive effects in other countries as well. “This step will certainly have a global impact on international adoptees from other countries.”
While Wenger has already decided to claim dual citizenship, most adoptees said they wanted to wait to see how things develop first before applying to reinstate their Korean citizenship, in order to get a clearer idea of what exactly dual citizenship would entail. Adoptees from Denmark, Luxembourg, and Norway are currently not eligible for dual citizenship due to citizenship laws in their respective countries.
Historically, dual citizenship hasn’t been possible in Korea either. Technically, children who obtain foreign citizenship before they are twenty carry dual citizenship until the age of twenty-two, when they must then renounce one of their two nationalities. If they do not specifically claim their Korean citizenship before this age, it is automatically forfeited. In other cases, if Korean citizens gain another nationality, either through marriage or merit, their Korean citizenship is simultaneously forfeited.
Most Koreans who obtain dual citizenship from a more advanced country voluntarily give up their Korean citizenship. Due to this, Korea has been experiencing a great deal of “brain drain,” the phenomenon when a country’s brightest and best, usually graduate or post-graduate students who study at top universities abroad, gain citizenship in those countries.
On the other hand, foreign nationals who choose to give up their own citizenship in order to gain Korean nationality are typically from less developed countries, such as China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. In 2009, Chinese citizens accounted for 77% – or 20,700 – of the 26,765 people who either acquired or reinstated their Korean citizenship. Vietnam came in a distant second with 14% or 3,795, and citizens from the Philippines made up the third largest group with 832 people gaining citizenship. Even with over 26,000 foreign nationals obtaining Korean citizenship last year, the decreasing birth rate coupled with the number of Koreans relinquishing their citizenship (last year’s statistic was 22,022), the country is still facing a serious population crisis, a pressing catalyst for the new revision.
Of those that are eligible for dual citizenship next year under the new Nationality Law, there are seven groups that appear:
1. Foreign nationals that are considered “exceptionally talented” in the areas of science, economics, culture, and sports or those who have made a “significant contribution to the country”
2. Koreans that gained foreign citizenship while underage (20) and are proven not to be “anchor babies,” or children whose mothers went to give birth abroad specifically to take advantage of birthright citizenship laws.
3. Korean adoptees who achieved foreign citizenship through the adoption process
4. Koreans over the age of 65 who have foreign citizenship
5. Foreign spouses – under certain conditions, they must live in the country for two years and then pass a naturalization test before they are granted dual citizenship
6. Koreans who gained foreign nationality through marriage
7. Those who relinquished their foreign citizenship in order to maintain Korean citizenship – Korea will recognize dual citizenship if they are able to restore their foreign citizenship before 2016.
Under the new Nationality Law, Korean males who gained foreign citizenship through birthright or marriage may be required to serve their two year service in the Korean military if they are under the age of 36.
A version of this article can be found on the Korea Herald website http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100810000527
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’Chungmuro International Film Festival’ (CHIFFS 2010) will run from the 2nd September until the 10th September, in Chungmuro, the mecca of cinematographic history in Korea, where Korean cinema was born and evolved. Under the theme of Discovery, Restoration, Creation’, this year’s fetival will feature 115 films from 30 countries. Some movies will be screened free of charge at open-air cinemas, and during the festival an open-air cinema will be set up in Seoul Plaza. The opening ceremony will be held at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, with the opening film ‘For the Good of Others’ by Spannish filmmaker Oskar Santos.
