By Kim Jae-heun
Daegu District Court dismissed a Kazakh man's appeal against the local immigration office's ruling rejecting his application for refugee status last year.
The court said that if the judicial system of the applicant's country protected him fairly, he could not be recognized as a refugee
The 43-year-old man sold secondhand cars in Kazakhstan imported from Russia, and was approached by drug dealers who asked him to smuggle drugs in the cars _ something he refused to do.
He came to Korea in February last year on a visa waiver program and in June applied for refugee status at the Daegu Immigration Office claiming the drug dealers would kill him if he went back to Kazakhstan.
However, the immigration office declined his application saying there was no concrete evidence that he would be attacked if he returned home. He filed an appeal with the Ministry of Justice, which was also rejected his claim. The man then took the case to court.
“Even though he could face retribution as he claims, it is related to individual crimes, so it does not meet oppression as specified in the Refugee Law, which is persecution for causes of race, religion or nationality,” the court ruled.
“We rule that the plaintiff can avoid such a situation through Kazakh law. If that is not enough, we think he could move to a different region of the country,” the court added.