To prevent privacy invasion in remarried families, descriptions are simplified to “household members” and “cohabitants.”
Together, we are pursuing the inclusion of foreign names and simplifying documents for moving in notification.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety (Minister Yoon Ho-jung) announced on November 13 that it will pre-announce legislation on a revision of the “Resident Registration Act Enforcement Decree” and “Resident Registration Act Enforcement Rules,” which include improvements in the way family relationships are noted in resident registration certificates.
The core of this revision is to simplify the notation of family relationships listed on basic resident registration. In the future, except for the head of the household’s spouse, family members (parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.) will be marked as “household members,” and other people living together will be indicated as “cohabitants.” If the applicant desires, they can still display detailed family relationships with the head of the household as before.
Until now, remarried families have experienced cases where unnecessary personal information was exposed due to precise family relationship notation, such as listing the spouse’s children or uncle. This improvement is expected to raise the level of personal information protection by minimizing the information recorded on the basic resident registration document.
Together with this system improvement, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety will prepare guidance to inform applicants that they can choose only the information needed for their application purpose, and will promote in both the public and private sectors to refrain from requesting unnecessary personal information submissions.
Additionally, for the resident registration transcript of foreigners, it will change to include both the Korean name and Romanized name. Previously, foreigners faced difficulties in proving identity since their Korean name appeared on family registration documents, while only the Romanized name was on the resident registration transcript. After the revision is enforced, the dual notation will make identification verification more convenient.
Furthermore, the application process and required documentation for the “Notification Service of Moving-In Report” will be simplified. Applicants who agree to “joint use of administrative information” will not need to separately submit a building registration certificate or family relation certificate, simplifying the procedure to just one application form and increasing applicant convenience.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety will collect various opinions from the public and related agencies from November 13 to December 23 during the legislative notice period and incorporate them into the revision. The revision can be confirmed in the official gazette and the National Participation Legislation Center, and opinions can be submitted via mail, fax, or the National Participation Legislation Center.
Minister Yoon Ho-jung stated, “The revision of the Resident Registration Act Enforcement Decree is expected to address the issue of privacy invasion for remarried families and the inconvenience of identity verification for foreigners,” adding, “As the resident registration system is closely related to the daily lives of the citizens, we will continue to improve it to prevent inconvenience.”