hankyoreh

a refugee from Tibet with Nepalese citizenship

By Jin Myeong-seon and Jin Seon-sik, staff reporters

On Sept. 5, just before the long Chuseok holiday, Min-su, 38, who knows and loves Korea as much as anyone, was told once again that he could not become a Korean. Hon. Lee Seung-taek of the Seoul Administrative Court, administrative division no. 1, found that the Ministry of Justice’s decision to deny his application for naturalization was appropriate. Lee made the ruling in a lawsuit that Lama Dawa Pasang (Korean name Min-su), a refugee from Tibet with Nepalese citizenship, filed against the Ministry of Justice.

“The plaintiff resided illegally in Korea for nine years, and he gravely endangered the legal stability and order of the country by unjustly obstructing a redevelopment project and preventing the police from carrying out their duties,” the court ruled. The major reason for rejecting Min-su’s appeal was the fine he had received for obstructing justice in 2011 when he tried to stop the demolition of the building that was the location of the restaurant he had struggled to establish.

During the trial, Min-su explained that he had paid all of the fines for his illegal stay in the country and that he had resisted the demolition out of self-defense, feeling that his livelihood could be jeopardized by the redevelopment. Considering that he has three children with his Korean wife, he argued that denying his application for naturalization was excessive, but his arguments were not accepted.

Year of the golden boar, year of the white tiger, year of the black dragon. Like other Koreans, Min-su and his wife gave birth to children on those years that were regarded as auspicious. His first child, who is now in elementary school, is old enough to know that daddy is the only one of the five family members who is not a Korean national.

“I’ve turned into a Korean without even realizing it, but I don’t have the ID card to prove it,” Min-su said. When a Hankyoreh reporter met Min-su at Potala, his Tibetan restaurant in Seoul’s Jongno district, on Sep. 10, it was clear how dejected he was. Potala is the restaurant that Min-su runs to support his wife and children. It is also the place that he paid 5 million won (US$4,837) in fines to defend.

Min-su first came to Korea in Sept. 1997. He was an illegal resident until Dec. 2006, when he married a Korean woman named Lee Geun-hye, 35. Since Jan. 2007, he has been staying in Korea on an F-2 residency visa he received due to his marriage.

Min-su applied to be naturalized as a Korean citizen in Nov. 2013, but the Ministry of Justice notified him in March that his application had been denied because of the fine that he had been assessed. The ministry cited the clause in the Nationality Act that demands “orderly conduct” as the justification for its decision.

Min-su’s children are the reason he has been so hurt by the rejection of his naturalization application. “My children are going to find out about my ‘disorderly conduct,’ too. I feel like I’ve become an ex-con. Korean dads would have done the same thing if they had been in my shoes. As the head of the household, I was trying to keep my kids from going hungry. . .”

Min-su was even more disappointed because the court in question had previously found that the “orderly conduct” condition has to be interpreted strictly. In May, the same panel of judges ruled that it was appropriate for an application for naturalization to be denied because of a fine for drunk driving.

Min-su also submitted to the court 400 A4 pages showing how much he had done to contribute to Korean society. The documents included information about his volunteering as a Tibetan interpreter for the courts and the immigration service, lectures that he had delivered to schools about multiculturalism, and news reports about how he had opened Korea’s only Tibetan restaurant. He also submitted a petition with around 1,000 signatures from Korean citizens.

“It’s a character reference of sorts. More than 1,000 Koreans say that I’m trustworthy. But for the court, the only thing that mattered was the fine,” Min-su said. He is planning to appeal the decision so that he can “look his children in the eye.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]