hankyoreh

By Hwang Chun-hwa, staff reporter
More than 100 Chinese Koreans (Joseonjok) who had been banned from Korea after committing crimes were recently caught reentering the country using fake documents.
The Foreign Crime Investigation Unit of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ office announced on June 24 that they indicted 130 illegal immigrants, 11 of whom were taken into custody.
Prosecutors have reviewed 94,000 Chinese Koreans who entered Korea and finished the registration process of foreigners from January to September of 2007, with photo contrast with 800 Chinese criminals who deported from Korea for felony and murder from 2003 to last year.
Once back in China, many ethnic Koreans take advantage of the fact that China’s immigration system is not thoroughly computerized. They purchased fake identification through brokers at a cost of 4-5 million (US$3,400-4,300). Those ID cards were then used to acquire new passports and visas. Some made it as far as gaining South Korean citizenship. Since the system of fingerprint scanning for foreigners was abolished in Korea in 2003, it has been harder for immigration officials to identify illegal immigrants.
Some of those recently caught were criminals who had been deported from Korea for committing severe crimes including murder, drug trafficking, and sexual assault. For example, Lee, 63, was sentenced to two years and six months with three years of probation after she imprisoned her ex-husband and attempted to extort him for money. She reentered Korea in 2007 and had been working as a nanny in Seoul’s Gangnam district, after receiving a new ID card. Moreover, another Lee, who had been sentenced to two years and six months for selling methamphetamine and deported, re-entered Korea in 2009 and tried to get a Korean identification card while working in a factory.
Others had changed their identities as many as four times, or reentered the country with their families.
An official in the prosecutors’ office said, “If we reviewed the statuses of all the 1.4 mil. foreigners who reside in Korea, the number of the illegals would be over 1,000.”

Translated by Jang Ju-hae, Hankyoreh English intern

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