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By Kim Da-ye
A 60-year-old stateless woman whose Korean parents were forced to move to Sakhalin in Russia during the Japanese colonial rule was confirmed as a Korean national by the court.
The Sakhalin resident, identified as Kim, recently won a lawsuit she brought against the Korean government at the Seoul Administrative Court in order to confirm her nationality.
Kim is the first descendant of victims of forced labor abroad to win a suit for nationality verification. It is expected to influence similar cases filed by stateless ethnic Koreans.
Kim was born in Sakhalin in 1954, but never acquired Russian citizenship. She said that because her parents remained Koreans, she should be Korean by birth under the country's Nationality Law, according to the ruling.
She provided her birth certificate and the death certificates of her parents that showed they were born in Korea. Her Sakhalin ID card showed that she has no nationality.
The government argued that Kim never tried to verify her nationality with Korea's Ministry of Justice, so bringing a lawsuit directly against the government isn't appropriate.
The three-judge panel led by Park Yeon-wook said in the ruling that the Constitution and the nationality law do not indicate that only the executive branch can confirm one's nationality.
"There are no grounds on the executive branch's right to confirm one's nationality before the court does," said the judges.
The government also said that for Kim to be recognized as a Korean, she should prove that her parents did not obtain foreign citizenships before her birth and that she did not become naturalized outside Korea, but she didn't.
The court ruled that the death certificates of Kim's parents, her birth certificate and ID card are all authentic public documents while there is no evidence that she acquired a foreign citizenship.
Kim's brother testified to the court that her father and her mother, identified as Lee — both from South Gyeongsang Province — had 11 children, and eight survived. The father moved to Sakhalin in 1938, and came back to Korea and married her mother in Busan. The couple returned to Sakhalin. The father passed away in 1977 and the mother in 1983. The brother obtained Russian nationality in 1990, but her sister didn't.
Beginning in 1939 when Japan invaded China, tens of thousands of Koreans were drafted from southern provinces to Sakhalin for forced labor. After Korea's independence, Koreans couldn't return because Japan abandoned them there and Russia forbade them from leaving the country.
The relocation project started after the governments of South Korea and Japan agreed in 1990 to help the Koreans in Sakhalin return to their homeland.
So far, a total of 4,189 Koreans in Sakhalin moved to Korea under the project. Some of them died here or went back to the Russian island.
