By Kang Hyun-kyung
The government will issue resident ID cards to overseas Koreans with permanent residency in foreign countries from as early as 2015, the Ministry of Security and Public Administration said Tuesday.
When Koreans emigrate or obtain permanent residency rights in foreign countries, they can maintain their Korean citizenship. However, district offices terminate their Korean resident ID cards.
The ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, plans to rewrite the Residential Identification Card Law this year in order to have the measure take effect from 2015.
Minister Yoo Jeong-bok reported the planned revision of the law during the Cabinet meeting Tuesday.
From 2015, district offices will not terminate resident ID cards for emigrating Koreans.
Without resident ID cards, overseas Koreans face plenty of inconveniences in financial transactions, real estate deals or signing contracts to lease or purchase homes in Korea, a ministry official said.
“When you go to a bank here for financial transactions, tellers would ask you to present your ID card with your identification card number. Without the cards, overseas Koreans face lots of inconveniences,” the official said.
The ministry official said that things become even more complicated when overseas Koreans are visiting here to sign a contract to lease or buy a home.
When they sign real estate contracts, overseas Koreans use their passport as such contracts require them to give their personal information.
“A problem occurs when their passports expire after the contracts,” said the ministry official. “Their new passports have new passport numbers. This means that they need to sign whole new contracts due to the change in their personal information.”
Although they are Korean nationals, they go through these inconveniences just because they have no Korean resident ID cards.
“We came up with the measure to resolve inconveniences facing these overseas Koreans,” the official said.