인권적 관점에서 본 대한민국 국적법의 제⋅개정

Abstract

Nationality refers to a status of a citizen of the country or the legal rights as a citizen. Each country has its own nationality laws recognizing different requirements in becoming a citizen, such as territorial sovereignty, lineage, and ethnicity. The decision of acquisition of nationality or abandonment of nationality is a matter that falls under national policy; however, it is an area that individual’s opinion should also be respected. South Korea’s Nationality Act has been established in 1948, and since then it has been revised 16 times. As South Korea rapidly transitioned to a multicultural society since the 1980s, the Nationality Act has become an important part of the immigrations legislation, and nationality played an important role regarding with the protection of human rights of stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to analyze the contents of Korean Nationality Act in terms of human rights and to discuss the meaning of it. In the introduction, the necessity of the research was examined; in Chapter two, the process of enacting the Nationality Act, and its basic principles and main contents were examined. Chapter three outlines the revision of the Nationality Act by organizing and analyzing the main contents of each revision period. Chapter four analyze and evaluate the enacted Nationality Act and the Nationality Act in terms of human rights based on the right to equality and freedom. It was concluded that South Korea’s Nationality Act has been revised to be more open and more human rights friendly compared to the early days; it is making efforts to ensure human rights as much as possible while respecting individual’s opinion. However, there are still insufficient parts in the perspective of human rights; accordingly, improvement suggestions were made.