Court denies dual citizenship application, citing 'birth tourism'
A Seoul court has supported the rejection of an application for dual US-South Korean citizenship because their parent's residence in the US was for the purpose of their child gaining US citizenship.
The Seoul Administrative Court said Monday that it had ruled in favor of the Seoul Southern Immigration Office, which rejected the plaintiff's February 2024 application to retain the citizenships of both countries.
South Korea's Nationality Act states that a child of a citizen obtains citizenship at birth, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born inside its territories. This means that someone born in the US to parents who are Korean citizens — as in case of the plaintiff — is granted dual citizenships at birth.
Dual citizens at birth are usually allowed to retain the nationality of South Korea and another country by pledging to the government not to exercise the rights of foreign citizenship before the age of 22, or within two years of completing their mandatary military service in the case of men. This is to prevent dual citizens from dodging duties mandated for South Koreans, such military service.
But the immigration office refused to allow dual citizenship to the plaintiff, saying that the plaintiff's mother is thought to have lived in the US only for the explicit purpose of obtaining US citizenship for her child — sometimes referred to as "birth tourism." The Nationality Act states that in cases where the parent is "deemed to have resided in a foreign country for the purpose of having the person acquire the nationality of the foreign country," the child can retain his or her South Korean citizenship only after renouncing the other nationality.
The plaintiff's mother went to the US in 2003 just before giving birth to the plaintiff, staying in the country for a month and a half. She went back to the US in 2011 and lived for four months since then.
"There are substantial grounds to believe (that the plaintiff's mother) gave birth in a foreign country, with the intent to have the child gain the citizenship there," the court said in its verdict.
The plaintiff denied that the mother's stay in the US was for the purpose of ensuring her child had US citizenship, saying that she lived for four years in the country overall.
The Article 17-3 of the Enforcement Decree of the Nationality Act does state that a person who lived for two or more years in a country and gave birth there cannot be considered as having conducted birth tourism. But the court said this clause applies to parents who stayed for two consecutive years at the time of the birth of the child.
"The Nationality Act of this country had applied strict single nationality principle, and has only allowed dual citizenship on a limited number of cases since 2010. If the court interprets the article (Article 17-3) as the plaintiff claims, we cannot achieve the act's goal of preventing birth tourism," the court went on to say.
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