Overseas Koreans, foreigners to flex muscle in polls

By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff reporter

Tens of thousands of ethnic-Koreans will be able to flex their political muscle for the first time in the June 2 local elections.

The change is the result of a 2007 ruling by the Constitutional Court that recognized the suffrage of citizens living abroad in local elections here as well as presidential and National Assembly polls.

The number of overseas Korean voters allowed to vote in the upcoming elections totals 58,181, according to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security Wednesday.

The majority of them are from English-speaking countries with the United States alone accounting for some 29,300, followed by Canada for 9,000, Japan 8,700, New Zealand 4,000 and Australia 2,000, a ministry official said.

However, some 3,000 ethnic-Koreans who have yet to report a domestic residence to the Immigration Office after arriving here will be excluded from the voting list.

An analysis of the ministry's figures suggests that the first-time voters are heavily concentrated in the capital Seoul and adjacent areas with Gyeonggi Province and Incheon accounting for 14,951 and 2018, respectively.

The latest figures also show that the number of non-Koreans eligible to vote in the polls has doubled since 2006, when the last local elections were held to pick mayors, governors and council members.

The total number of foreigners eligible to cast ballots in the June 2 elections is 12,899, up from 6,726 in 2006.

The upcoming polls mark the second time that foreigners who have maintained permanent resident status are entitled to exercise the right to vote in Korean elections.

As Korea became increasingly a multicultural nation, it revised the election law in 2005 to grant suffrage at the local polls to non-Korean nationals who meet certain legal requirements; those entitled to vote should be aged 19 years or older, and have lived here for more than three years after obtaining an F-5 visa, known as the permanent resident visa.

The number of F-5 visa holders stood at 27,981 in March this year.

Empowerment of foreigners in domestic politics is foreseeable thanks to a sharp rise in the number of naturalized foreigners.

The number of foreigners naturalized as Korean citizens hit a record high of 25,044 in 2009, up from 11,518 from the previous year.

Of the naturalized Koreans who came from 49 countries, Chinese nationals accounted for 78 percent of them last year, followed by Vietnamese and Filipinos, which stood at 15 percent and 3 percent.

Observers also say non-Koreans will play a bigger role with the recent passage of a bill that will grant multiple citizenship to talented foreign residents from Jan. next year without having to renounce their existing nationality.

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