SEOUL — A number of occasions per week, Washington-based immigration legal professional Chun Jong-Joon will get a telephone name from yet one more flabbergasted Korean American. All have made the identical discovery: They or their U.S.-born kids maintain South Korean citizenship and can’t give it up.
He explains the explanation: an modification made to South Korean citizenship regulation twenty years in the past.
By the point they name Chun, they’re within the grip of the regulation’s many real-life implications.
Lots of the calls contain younger males who be taught that they’re now topic to roughly two years of service in South Korea’s army, which is necessary for male residents after they flip 18.
Standing behind a drill teacher, recruits wave to their members of the family throughout an induction ceremony at a Marine Corps base in Pohang, South Korea.
(Jae C. Hong / Related Press)
Some are members of the U.S. army who abruptly discover themselves unable to deploy to South Korea. Others are civilians who need to transfer there for work or marriage, however have little interest in army service, which pays as little as $447 a month and may derail households and careers.
In different circumstances, acceptances to check overseas applications at South Korean universities had been rescinded as a result of solely bona fide foreigners are eligible.
The regulation can even have an effect on Korean People who don’t have any plans to step foot in South Korea: these searching for careers in delicate U.S. authorities jobs in intelligence or nuclear vitality that prohibit twin residents.
“Many people still don’t know that they or their children are affected by this law,” stated Chun, who at 66 has been lobbying in opposition to it for greater than a decade.
“I can’t retire because of this,” he stated.
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The issue began with a singer named Yoo Seung-jun.
Born in Seoul in 1976, Yoo and his household immigrated to California when he was 12. He ultimately caught the eye of a South Korean expertise company, moved again to Seoul, launched a music profession and have become one of many nation’s most beloved stars.
Consistent with his picture as a patriotic son, he assured followers in media interviews that he would serve his two-year obligatory army service like all people else — in contrast to others who used their wealth or standing to keep away from it.
Chun Jong-Joon on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
(Craig Hudson / For The Occasions)
However in 2002, six months after receiving his conscription discover, Yoo traveled to the US, grew to become a naturalized American and renounced his South Korean citizenship, immediately exempting him from army obligation.
Responding to the following nationwide outrage, the legislature handed a 2005 regulation that made it more durable for sons with Korean citizenship to resign it earlier than finishing army service.
The principle targets of the regulation had been households who timed visits to the US so their sons could be born there for the categorical function of later dodging conscription. However the U.S.-born sons of households that had completely moved — the “real diaspora Koreans,” as one legislator put it — weren’t immune.
The Korean citizenship they inherit from their dad and mom used to run out routinely at age 22. However below the brand new regulation, in the event that they don’t resign it earlier than March of the yr they flip 18, they’re caught with it till 38.
The regulation has acquired little consideration in the US, so many younger males discover out solely after it’s too late — which is how they wind up calling Chun.
He estimates that round 250,000 diaspora Koreans world wide unwittingly have twin citizenship due to the regulation.
Peng Lin and Yoo Seung-jun attend a premiere through the Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant in 2010.
(Stephane Cardinale / Corbis by way of Getty Photographs)
The Army Manpower Administration, the nation’s conscription company, doesn’t hold data of what number of twin residents have been charged with draft evasion, in response to a spokesperson. However 417, together with 122 Korean People, have served within the South Korean army since 2011.
Even for many who discover out in regards to the regulation in time to resign their South Korean citizenship, the method itself is onerous, requiring a number of in-person journeys to the closest South Korean embassy.
“Many of the people who come to me for help end up giving up halfway through the process,” Chun stated.
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Those that uncover they’re needed for army service typically have little private expertise with South Korea.
Take the case of a 32-year-old software program engineer who spoke on the situation that he be recognized solely by his surname, Park. Born and raised in North Carolina, he remembers a childhood stuffed with lemonade stands and soccer.
He first heard in regards to the regulation when he was in school and his mom informed him a couple of younger man at their church who had tried to maneuver to South Korea to show English, solely to be informed that he could be drafted by the army if he confirmed up.
Park didn’t suppose a lot about it, as a result of he had no plans to maneuver to South Korea.
However in 2015, whereas doing a examine overseas program in China, he started relationship a South Korean lady.
Folks stroll close to South Korea’s capital tour bus in Seoul.
(Lee Jin-man / Related Press)
As issues acquired critical, he began eager about shifting to South Korea, the place she helped her dad and mom run a small development firm.
However having missed the deadline to resign his South Korean citizenship, he couldn’t legally dwell or work within the nation with out serving within the army for 2 years.
It made little sense to him. He thought-about himself American and solely American. He barely spoke Korean.
Then in 2020, the Constitutional Courtroom sided with an 17-year-old Korean American pupil who argued that the 2005 regulation positioned disproportionate burdens on diaspora Koreans and violated their fundamental rights — particularly the liberty to decide on occupations that forbade twin citizenship, akin to engaged on a Navy nuclear submarine.
“Oh my gosh, it’s happening,” Park recalled considering. “They’re absolutely going to fix this for us and then we’re going to be able to be together.”
Park moved to South Korea and acquired married in October 2022, meaning to resign his South Korean citizenship and apply for a international spousal visa.
However the corrective measure the federal government carried out provided aid to solely those that needed to show that distinctive hurt was at stake, akin to a misplaced job alternative in the US.
“Simply not having known about the original obligation to renounce when you turn 18 isn’t counted as a ‘legitimate reason,’” Chun stated. “It did nothing to fix the problem.”
Because the coverage was launched in October 2022 till final December, simply 134 of 435 of purposes had been permitted, in response to the justice ministry.
Park has been dwelling within the nation as what the army authorities contemplate a draft dodger. He works remotely for a U.S. firm, which suggests there are not any native tax data to show him. He and his spouse haven’t formally registered their marriage with the federal government as a result of he’s afraid officers will ask about army service. If he’s caught, he might resist a number of years in jail.
At random intervals, earlier than his vacationer keep interval in South Korea expires, he leaves to be within the U.S. by himself for a number of months.
When an airport immigration officer as soon as requested him flat-out if he was a Korean citizen, he evaded the query and informed her each of his dad and mom had been American — which was the reality.
“I almost had a heart attack,” he recalled.
He has considered simply going by way of with army service, till actuality hits him. His Korean remains to be shaky. His job could be gone by the point his two years had been up.
“It would be devastating,” he stated. “We both come from working-class families. We can’t afford for me to not work for two years.”
“I just really want to start my life,” he added. “I’d love to pay taxes, I want to do everything above board. I want to do the right thing. But what am I supposed to do?”
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The 2005 regulation had been in impact eight years when Chun acquired his first name about it — from a younger Korean American whose scholarship provide to a South Korean college had been canceled after his twin citizenship standing got here to mild.
“That’s when I looked into my own history and discovered that my own son was also in the same situation,” stated Chun, who moved to the U.S. within the late Eighties after marrying an American. “If even I had no idea as a lawyer, how many regular people would know about this?”
Chun Jong-Joon says he can’t retire as a result of modification made to South Korean citizenship regulation.
(Craig Hudson / For The Occasions)
He has met with the South Korean prime minister, in addition to a number of legislators, to persuade them to revise the regulation in a means that might permit inherited Korean citizenship to routinely expire for males, because it did previous to 2005.
He has tried to determine the dangers concerned with merely visiting South Korea as a vacationer on a U.S. passport.
The federal government has stated that it solely targets twin residents who work or settle within the nation. However a 2019 case confirmed that short-term visits might nonetheless go mistaken.
That yr, a 40-year-old Korean American restaurant proprietor from Ohio named Don Yi visited South Korea for his father’s funeral, solely to be told that he was needed for draft evasion and positioned in a jail cell for a number of hours. He was caught within the nation for a month whereas he renounced his citizenship.
One among Chun’s newest challenges to the regulation includes a younger man who was accepted right into a U.S. Navy program involving nuclear vitality, a place that required a top-secret clearance and prohibited twin citizenship.
On the time of his start, his mom was only a few months shy of acquiring U.S. citizenship, which means she was nonetheless a South Korean nationwide. And at 18, he was already too previous to resign his computerized South Korean citizenship.
In the meanwhile, the Navy accepted a signed waiver that testified he had no associations with the South Korean authorities.
“But I don’t feel it’s a fix or that this is a closed case,” stated the person’s father, an IT guide for the U.S. authorities, who anxious that the issue will block his son from promotions.
And for now, all journeys to go to household in South Korea have been halted.
“If my son goes to Korea, he would be a criminal right now,” the daddy stated.
Chun isn’t hopeful that the regulation will change anytime quickly. A long time of hardened public anger at Yoo, the singer, has confirmed to be troublesome to undo.
The federal government banned Yoo from getting into the nation and, beginning in 2015, rejected all three of his purposes for a visa to completely reside there. Yoo sued and received, with the Supreme Courtroom ruling in 2023 that the refusal was illegal.
However the entry ban, which is a separate administrative measure, has remained.
Yoo didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Two years in the past, one sympathetic legislator drafted a brand new modification to the citizenship regulation, however it failed to assemble the 10 votes it wanted to be formally proposed on the ground. Others are suggesting tightening visa necessities even additional.
“In some ways, Yoo became the whipping boy for all the public’s anger at social and political elites,” Chun stated. “Political leaders are all afraid of poking the hornet’s nest and taking a stand.”
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President Donald Trump addresses a gathering of governors on the White Home on February 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Picture by Win McNamee/Getty Photos)
