By Kang Seung-woo
More than 300 Yemeni nationals on Jeju Island have been granted one-year humanitarian stay permits, the justice ministry said Wednesday.
The Jeju Immigration Office decided to allow 339 of the asylum seekers to stay on humanitarian grounds instead of officially granting them refugee status. Now they can leave Jeju and enter mainland Korea
The office rejected 34 refugee applications, while delaying its decision on 85 others.
This year, a total of 481 Yemenis arrived on Jeju and sought refugee status ― last month just 23 were granted one-year residence permits, mostly pregnant women, people with injuries and minors.
“Those who received the humanitarian stay permits failed to meet the five requirements for refugee status,” said an official at the immigration office.
Humanitarian permits are granted when asylum seekers fail to meet the criteria for official refugee status, but are allowed to stay in the country due to other circumstances. The permit can be extended every year, but can also be canceled if the holder is found to have committed crimes either inside or outside Korea.
Asylum seekers can acquire refugee status if they face oppression for their race, religion, nationality, political stance or membership of a particular social group.
“Thirty-four applicants were denied because they either face criminal charges or are believed to have sought asylum here for economic purposes as they could have safely stayed in other countries,” Jeju Office of Immigration chief Kim Do-gyun said in a briefing.
Those whose applications were refused can appeal, and during the administrative process, they may stay on Jeju, but are not allowed to leave the island.
The immigration office is set to finish its review of the pending cases as soon as possible, Kim said.
“Among the 85 pending cases, we have a few that can be accepted as refugees,” he added.
The arrival of so many people from the Islamic country has raised concerns over potential terrorist attacks in Korea. As a result, some Koreans have protested against giving them refugee status.
In July, an online petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website calling for the scrapping of the country's Refugee Protection Act gained more than 710,000 signatories ― the highest number since the presidential office opened the petition site last year.
The Ministry of Justice announced in August that it would amend the refugee law to create a stricter screening process and block repeated applications.
Korea has only approved about 3.8 percent of total refugee applicants since 1994, when it began to review refugee applications in line with its signing of the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention.