Ministry to introduce foreigner fingerprinting bill next month

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Ministry to introduce foreigner fingerprinting bill next month

The Justice Ministry said yesterday it will submit an immigration bill next month to the National Assembly to collect biological records, including fingerprints, from foreigners entering Korea.

The measure would be a revival of a system that was scrapped five years ago. It is expected to spark controversy. The ministry said there was an increasing need for the fingerprinting system as criminal cases involving foreigners have increased.

Korea scrapped the system in 2004, as then-Justice Minister Kang Kum-sill accepted claims from human rights groups that the fingerprinting system is akin to “treating foreigners as potential criminals.”

Following the legal change, only those foreigners under criminal investigation have been forced to offer fingerprints.

The ministry has developed detailed guidelines for the revision. Foreigners aged 17 or older would have their photos taken and provide fingerprints. Those foreigners entering Korea for residence of three months or longer would offer 10 fingerprints. Exception will apply to diplomats and foreign government officials.

“Introducing foreigners’ biological information into a database again is urgently needed to prevent illegal entry, ban entry of criminals and terrorists and to tackle escalating crime by foreigners,” said Lee Bok-nam, a mid-level official with immigration review department of the ministry.

As of August this year, the number of expatriates surpassed 1.1 million. But the crimes by foreigners surged from 4,328 in 2001 to 20,624 last year. In the first eight months of this year, the figure stood at 15,533, according to the National Police Agency.

Other than use in criminal investigations, fingerprinting is a useful tool for identifying those who have been accidentally killed but carry no personal ID, officials said.

Last April, a man in his 50s who is assumed to be a foreigner killed himself by leaping from the 14th floor of an apartment in Doksan-dong, western Seoul. He remains unidentified.

“I think fingerprinting foreigners is necessary because tracing criminal suspects among them is difficult without their biological data,” said Jason Chung, a consultant for a multinational firm in Seoul. “I don’t find it problematic since the government already keeps fingerprints of Koreans in its database.”

An association of various civic groups nationwide, including a Busan branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has opposed the system since the Justice Ministry unveiled plans to propose the revision in April. The fingerprinting measure goes against the principle of the “presumption of innocence” stipulated in the Constitution, the association maintains. They claim that the doctrine means a defendant is not guilty until the point of conviction.

“Collecting physical information from foreigners could incur protests from the international community,” the association said.

The Justice Ministry said a fingerprinting system for foreigners is not a discriminatory measure. “There is no element of discrimination because all Koreans are supposed to register their fingerprints once becoming adults,” said Lee.

He added that the Constitutional Court ruled in 2005 that fingerprinting for resident registration is constitutional.

“I don’t mind too much about fingerprinting but I suppose there is a slight niggling feeling that it’s somehow discriminatory,” said Niels Footman, an expatriate who first arrived in Korea in 2001.

Yohan Lee, an industrial designer for a large domestic enterprise, said as a person who has studied overseas for more than five years he does not agree with a fingerprint collection from foreigners.

“I hated the feeling of being discriminated for simply being a foreigner in other countries,” he said. “I hope foreigners won’t get the same feeling here.”

Foreigner fingerprint data compilation began in the United States and some other major economies, including Japan, largely as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Last year, the United Kingdom started fingerprinting anyone from non-European Union countries seeking to enter the country.


By Seo Ji-eun [spring@joongang.co.kr]

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