Unfortunate sequence of events: he turned out to be a Korean citizen which was the cause.
As such I really don't understand the title of the post. The fact he was an American citizen had nothing to do with it. He might as well have been Egyptian, Irish or Chinese and it wouldn't have changed anything.
People, even dual citizens, are often under the mistaken impression that having another citizenship is a "get out of jail free" card for the obligations of the other one. This is very much not the case.
It might depend on country but I can tell how it works in Finland.
If you are in Finnish army then you will fight against your other country. But Finnish army doesnt allow being member of multiple armies. So if you have gone trough, as an example, US service Finnish army wont accept you. And if you go to US army after gaining rank in Finnish army you lose the Finnish rank and are just a civilian.
Interesting. The reason I'm asking this is because I faintly recall my parents saying that they were asked if they'd fight for the United States when they applied for their citizenship if they ever went to war against their (previous) home country, so I'm curious if there's differences in what they ask you if you are applying for a dual citizenship.
In many cases it is, so long as you stay away from the other jurisdiction.
In this case, though, it's not that he had such an impression. It's that he didn't know he was a Korean citizen.
If draft is a social contract, what do you call a contract where one of the parties never consented to it and wasn't even aware that someone signed them up without their consent, and then the other party tries to enforce it?
Citizenship is not about consent. There might be situations where you can out of yours, but I don't think that means that everyone else consents. That said I don't agree with how it works.
Citizenship is at least opt-out in general. Some countries don't let you do it at all, and most make it complicated and expensive, but still. For adults, that's an option if you're unhappy with taxes, laws etc.
But if you're born a citizen in a country with conscription, then you're underage - and thus unable to opt-out on your own, even if you could somehow afford it - until you're 18. And then they hand you the summons.
Indeed. It's quite explicit, for example, in the British government's information on "Support for British nationals abroad":
"If you have some connection with another country
– for example, by birth, by descent through either parent, by marriage or by residence – you may be
a national of that country as well as being a British national. ... You may still have certain responsibilities with that country, such as compulsory military service."
The worst of it is, some states don't let you rescind your citizenship at all. I know at least 2 Iranian born citizens of my country, that cannot travel to their family and former friends anymore because of this -- Turkey seems to enforce steps in this regard too lately.
Citizenship status should be "opt-in" not "opt-out" or "no option" at all.
Why? Why should other countries accept a Western conception of citizenship as disclaimable? Those other countries are not colonies of anyone, they’re sovereign, they can do as they like and if other countries disagree they can go to war or use some of the other methods countries use to resolved disagreements.
Each individual should have the choice to live in the society they want, that is equally true the other way around -- I don't see a connection to a concoted West-vs-East / colonial argument. You are trying to create an point fo conflict where there is none.
If my country would enforce this (It doesn't) I should have the equal opportunity to renounce my german citizenship in favour of the iranian citizenship...
This also happens in the West as well.
And last but not least, this my opinion, I am not forcing this onto anyone -- and if I am of the opinion that this concept of "citizenship as hostage" is BS, I can make that opinion public. This touches the sovereignty of those states in no way, except when this sovereignty is enforced on people that are not part of the society of that country, and have lived 95% of their lives in another country.
> Each individual should have the choice to live in the society they want
In practice, most societies do not allow arbitrary individuals to choose to come and join them; immigration restrictions are a thing pretty much everywhere.
This is not a matter of immigration restriction. The people I was referring to in my first comment already are citizens of Germany -- hell they speak better german and have more knowledge about our history and culture than some of my countrymen that were born here.
If you have lived 34/35 years in this country and came over with your parents than it is not an "arbitrary choice" you do an a whim.
But I know what you mean -- This is an idea of how [in my opinion] it should work, not the way it actually works...
"More than two decades previously, a family member — who, he’s still not sure — added his name to the family register then used in South Korea to determine citizenship, incorrectly listing his place of birth as Seoul."
I’m not sure that matters. It’s likely that his father is south korean and that makes him south korean by birth ex lege. If anything the register record just made it visible be he would still have been korean otherwise.
Yeah, think about Ted Cruz. He wasn't born in some base of the US like McCain was. He was born in Canada. Plain and simple. However he is a fully fledged citizen of the USA, and eligible to become president.
Really? That’s not my read of it. A kid is born in the US to naturalized US citizens of Korean ethnicity. Unbeknownst to him a relative enters him on some registry. He goes to Korea under a visa for ethnically Korean foreigners, and he in no way takes advantage of his supposed citizenship.
This sounds to me like the Korean government made a mistake and jailed an American citizen for two years without due process. I bet with a better lawyer he could have avoided it.
There was no mistake: by Korean law he's Korean and thus has to be conscripted. Of course it sucks that he wasn't aware of this, but the letter of the law was followed here.
I'm curious if it matters that he was born in the US to US citizens. When his parents became naturalized, they were required to renounce their Korean citizenship and were no longer dual citizens. So his father was not Korean nationality.
Just because you renounced you previous citizenship in the US, doesn't mean you lost it. Uruguayan law says you retain your citizenship even if you renounce it in order to obtain another.
Brazilian law, OTH, says you lose it if you voluntarily obtain another, even if you don't renounce.
> Uruguayan law says you retain your citizenship even if you renounce it in order to obtain another.
Not sure I understand this. When you renounce a citizenship, you file renunciation papers with the government of the country in question. If you are abroad, you do it with the embassy if that country. Renunciation is a explicit, unambiguous legally binding step recognized by the country in question.
Once approved, you lose that citizenship. How does one still retain citizenship, assuming the renunciation succeeds?
Unless you’re talking about assumed loss of citizenship by taking on another citizenship?
AFAIK, when you become a US citizen, you take an oath or sign something stating that you renounce all other allegiances. It doesn't mean you have to communicate your previous country.
Brazil, for instance, rarely does anything about it. The only case I know of is of a woman who returned to Brazil after being wanted for murder. The supreme court then ruled that she had lost her Brazilian citizenship and handed her over to the US (which they would not do were she Brazilian still).
Oh I see what you mean. Yes, the US thing technically that doesn’t fall under the legal meaning of renunciation. One country’s laws isn’t recognized by another country’s which is why there are loopholes that can be exploited in multiple citizenships, and may also be why people get into trouble if they don’t understand the rights and responsibilities of their citizenship.
As someone who once held multiple citizenships, I’ve learned that the only laws that count with respect to citizenship are the laws of the country of citizenship (principle of sovereignty). Whether they enforce it or not is another question, but no laws of another country apply to citizenship of a given country.
I’ve heard some comical examples in the past where the new country takes your old passport, and then your old country promptly sends it right back to you since it’s still valid.
Does it matter that the relative who wrote in some registry mistakenly wrote that he was born in Seoul? That's the kind of mistake that a good lawyer would have looked closely at.
I wonder if, had he asked a lawyer before going to Korea, he could have found this out at all? Knowing that Korea has conscription, it wouldn't have been a stupid thing to do, to try to get this 100% clear.
But if the crucial piece of the puzzle was what some 2nd cousin scribbled on some form in another country, it's possible that there was no way to find this out before travelling. The US lawyer would have had his US birth certificate, and given advice based on that. Could the Korean embassy grant you a letter confirming that you are not Korean? I sort-of think you'd be laughed out for asking.
I posted our family's very similar situation above. The S.Korean gov was quite reasonable about it. I have to wonder if there's things being left unsaid.
Thanks, that sounds entirely sane. You cleared this up while in the US?
The article makes it sound like living in Korea, and at the exact time some pop star was in the news for seemingly abusing privilege, was part of the reason. Although I'd be a little surprised if any bureaucrat senior enough to care about the news cycle was involved here (without knowing much about Korea).
This is a well-known situation for international adoptions. Many countries have mandatory military service for males, so often a male child who has been adopted from such a country will renounce his birth country's citizenship to avoid the military service, since he also has citizenship in his adoptive parent's country.
One of my best friends, the best man at my wedding, nearly had this happen to him. He was born and raised in Australia but had dual citizenship with Denmark. During a gap year after school before university, he travelled to Denmark for 12 months. He was surprised to find that he was being conscripted but managed to avoid this due to not being fluent in Danish. It seems that if this had of happened in South Korea then he would have been out of luck.
At least in Denmark you have the possibility to get over the border to germany or sweden and travel back -- trying to handle that matter from the Danish consulate in Australia. In South Korea, the only border is towards North Korea...
Boris Johnson, the British politician, was born in New York to British parents. When years later he tried to change planes in Florida en route to Mexico they would not let him into the USA without an American passport, his UK one was no good if he was born in the USA. So he renounced his USA citizenship, which he never knew he had, at which point they demanded his tax returns for his life, including a large chunk of the capital gains money he made selling a house in England. He had to pay up too despite never having had any connection with the USA except his birth. My point is not that this stuff is right but that it does happen, even in the USA.
Mysteriously we are all democracies yet still prisoners of our governments and unable to free ourselves?
He didn't renounce his US citizenship until 2016 when he was 52. I'm pretty sure that Boris would have known from an early age that he was an American citizen.
This situation is going to crop up a lot more as the EU implements a system to pre-approve travellers to Europe.
There are lots of USians that are technically EU citizens (born there decades ago, or their descendants knowingly or unknowingly registered with the home country).
In the past, the border police usually didn’t care once you arrived, but I bet the machine will be programmed more absolutely.
And if you’re an American with a security clearance, being a citizen of another country is usually okay if you haven’t taken any advantage of it, but getting a foreign passport could be a big red flag.
I have to wonder if there's something being left out of this article. My family was in very similar situations. Our family emigrated to the US from S. Korea. My little brother was in almost exactly the same situation as the guy in the article. He was born in the US and is a US citizen. My grandfather, in a fit of misplaced patriotism, registered my brother as being born in Korea so he could have Korean citizenship. Upon turning 18, the S.Korean military, of course, sent a draft notice. All it took to clear things up was for my brother to send proof of US birth and US citizenship. Problem solved, no big deal.
The poor guy could’ve dropped his Korean status. If he did it, he would’ve been extradited to the US and be banned from Korea for the rest of his life.
I knew a Canadian who managed to get drafted into the US military, for the Korean war I think, because he had a summer job as a young man in the US, and someone came in and said everyone needed to sign up for the draft so he did with everyone else. And he got drafted. Apparently after he went through boot camp, someone found out and I guess they were embarrassed, they didn't send him to war but they did keep him in the service! They kept him stateside for his commitment. And he didn't even get US citizenship out of it. Of course it never should have happened, but I made a mental note that this is the result of not taking bureaucracy seriously and just going with the flow.
> "It was only when Chun went to apply for a visa open to ethnic Korean foreigners that he discovered he was a South Korean citizen."
The above paragraph isn't very clear, but it implies that Chun was aware of his Korean citizenship before he flew into Korea? In fact, he consciously benefited from his Korean citizenship, by not go through the visa process? If that's the case, it would be eminently reasonable from the Koreans' perspective, that he should perform the obligations associated with citizenship. If I knew that I was a citizen of a country that has mandatory military service, I would really think twice before flying there.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 76.7 ms ] threadAs such I really don't understand the title of the post. The fact he was an American citizen had nothing to do with it. He might as well have been Egyptian, Irish or Chinese and it wouldn't have changed anything.
If you are in Finnish army then you will fight against your other country. But Finnish army doesnt allow being member of multiple armies. So if you have gone trough, as an example, US service Finnish army wont accept you. And if you go to US army after gaining rank in Finnish army you lose the Finnish rank and are just a civilian.
In this case, though, it's not that he had such an impression. It's that he didn't know he was a Korean citizen.
If draft is a social contract, what do you call a contract where one of the parties never consented to it and wasn't even aware that someone signed them up without their consent, and then the other party tries to enforce it?
But if you're born a citizen in a country with conscription, then you're underage - and thus unable to opt-out on your own, even if you could somehow afford it - until you're 18. And then they hand you the summons.
Only if you're able to obtain another citizenship. I don't think any country will allow renunciation if it leaves you stateless.
“social contract” is, at best, a very weak metaphor in any of it's uses.
"If you have some connection with another country – for example, by birth, by descent through either parent, by marriage or by residence – you may be a national of that country as well as being a British national. ... You may still have certain responsibilities with that country, such as compulsory military service."
Citizenship status should be "opt-in" not "opt-out" or "no option" at all.
If my country would enforce this (It doesn't) I should have the equal opportunity to renounce my german citizenship in favour of the iranian citizenship...
This also happens in the West as well.
And last but not least, this my opinion, I am not forcing this onto anyone -- and if I am of the opinion that this concept of "citizenship as hostage" is BS, I can make that opinion public. This touches the sovereignty of those states in no way, except when this sovereignty is enforced on people that are not part of the society of that country, and have lived 95% of their lives in another country.
In practice, most societies do not allow arbitrary individuals to choose to come and join them; immigration restrictions are a thing pretty much everywhere.
If you have lived 34/35 years in this country and came over with your parents than it is not an "arbitrary choice" you do an a whim.
But I know what you mean -- This is an idea of how [in my opinion] it should work, not the way it actually works...
"More than two decades previously, a family member — who, he’s still not sure — added his name to the family register then used in South Korea to determine citizenship, incorrectly listing his place of birth as Seoul."
This sounds to me like the Korean government made a mistake and jailed an American citizen for two years without due process. I bet with a better lawyer he could have avoided it.
If I were him I would be more angry, too.
Brazilian law, OTH, says you lose it if you voluntarily obtain another, even if you don't renounce.
Not sure I understand this. When you renounce a citizenship, you file renunciation papers with the government of the country in question. If you are abroad, you do it with the embassy if that country. Renunciation is a explicit, unambiguous legally binding step recognized by the country in question.
Once approved, you lose that citizenship. How does one still retain citizenship, assuming the renunciation succeeds?
Unless you’re talking about assumed loss of citizenship by taking on another citizenship?
Brazil, for instance, rarely does anything about it. The only case I know of is of a woman who returned to Brazil after being wanted for murder. The supreme court then ruled that she had lost her Brazilian citizenship and handed her over to the US (which they would not do were she Brazilian still).
As someone who once held multiple citizenships, I’ve learned that the only laws that count with respect to citizenship are the laws of the country of citizenship (principle of sovereignty). Whether they enforce it or not is another question, but no laws of another country apply to citizenship of a given country.
But if the crucial piece of the puzzle was what some 2nd cousin scribbled on some form in another country, it's possible that there was no way to find this out before travelling. The US lawyer would have had his US birth certificate, and given advice based on that. Could the Korean embassy grant you a letter confirming that you are not Korean? I sort-of think you'd be laughed out for asking.
The article makes it sound like living in Korea, and at the exact time some pop star was in the news for seemingly abusing privilege, was part of the reason. Although I'd be a little surprised if any bureaucrat senior enough to care about the news cycle was involved here (without knowing much about Korea).
But not all EU countries are like that.
"Forcibly conscripted" -- as opposed to voluntary conscription?
Mysteriously we are all democracies yet still prisoners of our governments and unable to free ourselves?
There are lots of USians that are technically EU citizens (born there decades ago, or their descendants knowingly or unknowingly registered with the home country).
In the past, the border police usually didn’t care once you arrived, but I bet the machine will be programmed more absolutely.
And if you’re an American with a security clearance, being a citizen of another country is usually okay if you haven’t taken any advantage of it, but getting a foreign passport could be a big red flag.
Sent it where? They actually had your little brother's address in the U.s.?
audio interview
The above paragraph isn't very clear, but it implies that Chun was aware of his Korean citizenship before he flew into Korea? In fact, he consciously benefited from his Korean citizenship, by not go through the visa process? If that's the case, it would be eminently reasonable from the Koreans' perspective, that he should perform the obligations associated with citizenship. If I knew that I was a citizen of a country that has mandatory military service, I would really think twice before flying there.