hankyoreh

This year, the South Korean government abandoned its male-dominated family registration system, known as the “hoju,” or “family headship system,” and adopted a new system for registering families, but it has sparked a series of ill effects. Because the new system defines family members as being the descendants of the mother and father to whom the child is born, but does not allow for other kinds of family ties, it is impossible for divorced people who remarry, who do not share the same family bloodline, to register their new spouse’s children under their own names.

In one case, a divorced woman, who was recently remarried, had difficulty when she realized that her son was not listed on her family record. The son is the child of her new husband and his estranged wife. On March 13, the woman, who is only identified by the surname Park, was surprised upon seeing a copy of her “Family Relations Certificate,” a government document that lists the members of one’s family. The only person listed on the document is her new husband, and her son does not appear, even though she is the person currently raising the child. It was with this sense of surprise that Park requested that officials place her son on the document. She was surprised again when she discovered that the child’s biological mother was still registered as the child’s mother, even though she is unaware of where the biological mother lives now. “According to the record, my son and I are unrelated,” Park said. “I’m worried that my child will be hurt if he happens to find out that I’m not his mother when the document is submitted to his school.”

Another woman, who is only identified by the surname Seo and is also remarried, was shocked when she recently found that her son, who is the biological child to whom she gave birth with her former husband, was still registered as one of her family members on the document, along with two daughters she had had with her new husband. When she asked a government official whether she could remove her son’s name from the document, in effect saying that he is no longer a member of her family, the official said, “No.”

“It doesn’t matter to my husband because he knows that I got remarried. But I have sleepless nights because I worry that my husband’s family, his colleagues at work and our two daughters may become aware of this fact,” Seo said. “Does the document define a family member as a person who lives with a person now?”

The new system is also posing hardships for orphans and children who have been adopted. For those who have been orphaned, the document is required to show the date when he or she was abandoned. The document of an adopted child is required to show both his or her birth and adoptive parents.

Kim Hong Miri, an activist with the Korea Women’s Hot Line, said, “There is no reason to show the date of an orphan’s abandonment on the Family Relations Certificate because the adoption record could be viewed separately. Expectations are high following the abolition of the hoju system, but doesn’t it in fact create another family head?”

In response, Bae Hyeon-tae, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, said, “The problem has arisen as the Family Relations Registration system allows individuals to issue the document. Originally, the nation’s Civil Law doesn’t recognize stepmothers who are raising children born to the new husband and his former wife as the child’s legal mother. To legally become the mother of the child, she must adopt the child after a trial,” Bae said. “The problems regarding the records of adoption and the date of abandonment had apparently not been discussed before the system changed,” Bae said. “If there were a request from the general public, it may be possible to do a revision and publicize the information.”

Kim Hong, the activist, said, “The government needs to benchmark the U.S. government’s system for issuing birth certificates, which separates the certificate into a ‘short form,’ with basic personal information such as birth date and place of birth, and a ‘long form’ with additional information available by request only.”

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