| Republic of Korea passport | |
The front cover of a contemporary Republic of Korea biometric passport
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| Issued by | South Korea |
| Type of document | Passport |
| Eligibility requirements | Republic of Korea citizenship |
| Expiration | 1, 5 , or 10 years |
Republic of Korea passports are issued to citizens of South Korea to facilitate international travel. Like any other passports, they serve as proof for passport holders' personal information, such as nationality and date of birth. However, South Korean passports also indicate the holder's resident registration number (unless the holder does not have one). Republic of Korea passports are issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and printed by Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation since 1973.[1]
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Ordinary passports are issued for one, five, or ten years of validity.
South Korean passports have the Korean Coat of Arms (bottom right) inscribed in the center of the front cover, with the Korean word Daehanminguk Yeokwon (대한민국 여권) inscribed above and its English translation Republic of Korea Passport below the coat of arms. Ordinary passports valid for five or ten years are in dark green.
The identity information page contains:
The textual portions of passports is printed in both English and Korean. The note inside Republic of Korea passports are written in both Korean and English. The message in the passport is written by the Republic of Korea's minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade which reads:
In Korean:
In English:
Exiting from South Korea via the northern border. The Republic of Korea's constitution considers the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as part of its territory, although under a different administration. In other words, the South does not view going to and from the North as breaking the continuity of a person's stay, as long as the traveller does not land on a third territory.
However, because of the political situation between the South and the isolated communist government of North Korea, it is almost impossible to enter the North from the South across the Korean DMZ. Tourists wishing to enter North Korea almost always enter from the Chinese border.
However, visa-free travel to the tourist resort of Mount Geumgang and the Kaesong Industrial Region was made possible under the "sunshine policy" orchestrated by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 1998. Those wishing to travel across the DMZ were given special travel certificates issued by Ministry of Unification or the travel agency, known as the Hyundai-Asan Corporation.
However, as of March 2010 all travel across the DMZ has now been suspended due to increasing tensions between North and South Korea. In July 2008, a female tourist was shot to death by a North Korean guard on a beach near Geumgang.
The Korean government has been issuing biometric passports since February 2008 for diplomats and government officials. They have been issuing this type of passports to all of their citizens since August 25, 2008.
Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade formed the 'Committee for promoting e-passports' in April 2006, and it will be scheduled to issue biometric passports in the second half of 2008. On September 4, 2007, the media reported that the Korean government decided to revise its passport law to issue biometric passports which include fingerprint information, first to the diplomats in the first quarter of 2008, and the rest of the public in the second half of the year. Some civil liberties have caused some controversy over the fingerprinting requirement because the ICAO only requires a photograph be recorded on the chip.
On February 26, 2008, the Korean National Assembly passed the revision of passport law. A new biometric passport was issued to diplomats in March, and to the general public shortly thereafter. Fingerprinting measures will not be implemented immediately; however, they began January 1, 2010.
The appearance of the new biometric passports is almost identical to the former machine-readable versions, and they both have 48 pages. However, the space for visas was reduced by six pages. These pages are now reserved for identication purposes, notices and other information, as well as the bearer's contacts. In the new biometric passports, the main identification page has moved to the second page from inside the front cover. The note from the Foreign Affairs Minister is still shown on the front page and the signature is shown on the page after photo identification.
The new biometric passport incorporates many security features such as colour shifting ink, hologram, ghost image, infrared ink, intaglio, laser perforation of passport number (from the third page to the back cover), latent image, microprinting, security thread, solvent sensitive ink, and steganography.[4]
Inside the backcover, a caution for the biometric chip is written both in Korean,
"주의 – 이 여권에는 민감한 전자칩이 내장되어 있습니다. 접거나 구멍을 뚫는 행위 또는 극한 환경(온도,습도)에의 노출로 여권이 손상될 수 있으니 취급에 주의하여 주시기 바랍니다."
and in English,
"This passport contains sensitive electronics, For best performance please do not bend, perforate or expose to extreme temperatures or excess moisture."
The passport holders' contact information that was originally held inside the backcover has also been moved to the last page of the new passport.
As of January 2009, Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation takes eight hours to produce the new biometric passport and is capable of producing 26,500 passports per day.[5]
As a result from South Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan in July, 2007, the South Korean government has banned Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia as travel destinations for safety reasons.[6]