Gov't considers stripping foreign permanent residents of right to vote

Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, center, answers questions from the press in front of the ministry headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, on Nov. 28. [YONHAP]

Korea may start limiting the voting rights of permanent foreign residents in the country.

Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon hinted at such in a conversation with the JoongAng Ilbo on Monday.

“I think it is within the national interest of this country to update the Public Official Election Act so that there is a level of reciprocity in the policy,” Han told the JoongAng Ilbo. “That was the idea anyway when the country decided to give foreign residents the right to vote.”

Since 2005, foreign nationals who have lived in Korea for at least three years following their acquisition of permanent residency have had the right to vote in local elections for governors, mayors and city council members.

In local elections last June, around 127,000 foreign nationals residing in Korea had this right, according to the National Election Commission. There were around 1.9 million registered foreign residents in Korea as of 2021, according to the Justice Ministry.

The reciprocity that Han spoke of is in relation to the voting rights for Koreans living overseas. In the United States, non-citizens, including permanent residents, cannot vote in federal, state and most local elections. This is the case in most countries.

To address the so-called “inequality” between voting rights for Korean residents overseas and foreign permanent residents of Korea, the Justice Ministry may try to scrap the amendment of 2005. But this would require National Assembly approval.

The ministry may try to tweak permanent residency policies instead, making it harder to maintain permanent residency.

“There is a need to reform the permanent residency system to solve the irrational problem that most Koreans living abroad do not have the right to vote, whereas in Korea any foreigner aged 18 or over with permanent residency status for over three years can,” the Justice Ministry said in a written response submitted to the office of Rep. Cho Jung-hun of the Transition Korea Party at the Assembly on Nov. 30.

Cho's office had asked whether the ministry was considering repealing the right to vote of foreigners with permanent residency.

Currently, foreign residents granted permanent residency visas, such as F-5 visas, are required to visit Korea at least once every two years to maintain them.

A similar policy is in effect in the U.K. and Canada for their permanent residency holders. In the United States, a green card holder needs to visit the U.S. at least once every year to maintain their status. In France, it's once every three years, and in Germany once every six months.

Behind the history of how foreign residents in Korea got the right to vote in local elections in 2005 are tens of thousands of Koreans living in Japan, many of them descendants of Koreans who went to Japan to work during the Japanese annexation of Korea (1910-45), and many of whom did not gain Japanese citizenship.

Only Japanese citizens can vote in Japan.

In passing the amendment to the Public Official Election Act with bipartisan agreement in 2005, the Assembly hoped that such a policy might give the Korean government extra leverage when calling on Japan to do the same for some 600,000 Korean permanent residents of Japan at the time.

That never happened.

Han Sang-hee, a professor of international law at Konkuk University in Seoul, said the approach of trying to get some kind of reciprocity out of two different countries’ immigration policies is in itself flawed.

“Local elections reflect the opinions of local residents, and it is only right the election should reflect the opinions of people living there, whether they are citizens or foreigners,” Han said. “There is no reason to apply reciprocity. If the country really wants reciprocity in the policies, then it should be channeling its diplomatic skills to try to convince other countries to adopt similar policies."

BY KIM MIN-JOONG, ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]