Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dysupes]

Hi!

My daughter was born a little over 2 weeks ago and my Korean wife and I are wondering how to register her and what we have to do. We've called the Dong office and Immigration and been told some things that I would like to check with those on here who have already been through this process.

The Dong office has told us that I need to register our daughter under my name and to do that I MUST change my own registration to read: last name first name. Seems strange as I wasn't required to do that before to register there and to register at every other government agency so I thought I'd check. Did any of you have to do this? And did it impact any of your other registrations (medical, driver's license, immigration, etc.)?

The Immigration office has told us that she MUST be registered with them either as a foreigner or as something that roughly translates to a dual national. To do this I must get her Canadian passport and registration, etc. and bring it to the Immigration office. Now, of course, the Canadian embassy website says this is unnecessary so I'm wondering if any of you have done this?

Thanks very much for the quick replies!

[eIn07912]

i dont have a wife or a baby and have absolutely no clue as to what the best advice for u is.

just wanted to say congrats on becoming a new dad!... and best of luck.

i had some friends in ur situation and theyve said over and over again that raising a bi-racial child in korea is incredibly difficult. for reasons im sure u already know (koreans being fervently nationalistic and consider themselves "ethnically superior and pure")... so my heart goes out to u man. i wish u all the strength in the world.

[Carla]

Congratulations~!!!!!!

[dragon777]

Congratulations! Register your baby as a Canadian.

[jontpanty]

Congrats on the baby!

If my memory serves me correct:
You have only 30 days to register with the Korean Immy office, which is something you must do even if your daughter has Korean citizenship. In my case, anyway, (3 years ago) we had to register my son at the US embassy and then bring that documentation to the Korean Immy office. It was quite stressful at the time, with the baby being so young....wish they would give you just a little more time to adjust.

Anyways, good luck, and I'd recommend you find out for sure VERY SOON, because I think it takes a few days to process things.

Congratulations again!

[Scott in Incheon]

We registered both our kids as koreans when they were born and we didn't get them canadian citizenship until they were 5 and 3. But that was a long time ago. Things may have changed.

[kabrams]

Just popped in to say congratulations!

[cmr]

Laws keep changing all the time, so make sure with the Canadian embassy, but I think we had something like two weeks to apply for the citizenship card in order to apply for the passport. We also needed an English version of the birth certificate that we got from the hospital.

Your wife can call at the embassy and she'll probably get better answers than if you call yourself. The lady at the front desk is Korea and I found it was always easier to let her talk with my wife.

You're going to have to get pictures done of your little one. I would suggest that you get them done where the embassy suggests. It's more expensive than other places, but you are sure that everything will be done correctly. I got my passport pictures done last month at a small camera shop near home and even though I told them exactly about the size and everything, I still had to cut the edges of the pictures when I got them because they weren't the correct size. I got my new passport last week, so I guess I did a good job.

From what my wife remembers, we had 30 days to report the child with the Korean governemnt, but we had to do it first with the Canadian government.

As far as I'm concerned, I never had anything to change about my own registration. On my alien card, my family name comes first followed by my first name, though. Maybe that's why.

At any rate, the best piece of advice I can give you is to get all the information you need from the official sources not from people on this forum. I'm sure everyone is well-intended, but they are not the ones who will make anything official, neither will I.

On a side note, people who claim that raising a bi-racial child in Korea is incredibly difficult because Koreans are very nationalistic and consider themselves "ethnically superior and pure"... well, I believe it may be true in some cases (anything is possible), but as a rule I believe this is a myth. Maybe I'll change my mind when my kids start school, but so far they seem to attract people's attention and kindness. It can be too much at times, but no one has ever been mean to my children because they weren't "pure" Koreans, which in itself, the purity, is another myth.

Anyway, have fun getting enough sleep!