Analysis of improving South Korean refugee policy : the case of 2018 Yemeni Refugee Crisis in Korea (Jeju Island)

Abstract

The Republic of Korea sought to become an "advanced human rights country" by joining the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1992. In addition, a provision for refugee recognition was established in the Immigration Act in 1993, and the refugee policy was implemented in earnest in 1994. However, contrary to the Korean government's expectation, criticism of the refugee policy continued on the inside and outside of the country, with the birth of the first Korean recognized refugee in 2001. Although the Korean government and the National Assembly established the first refugee act (the Korean Refugee Act) in Asia in 2012 to improve the refugee policy, the refugee acceptance rate remains at the bottom of the list of 36 OECD countries. Against this backdrop, Yemenis applied for refugee status after entering the country in 2018 using loopholes in the Korean immigration law. This incident made the refugee affairs public issue and marked a turning point in improving the Korean refugee policy. This paper aims to improve the flexible refugee system that “combines national security” and “human security”, focusing on the problems experienced in the refugee affairs in Jeju Island in 2018. To this end, it reviews the problems of Korea's refugee policy and the refugee law, and presents measures to improve the Korean refugee system in four stages of refugee application, screening, decision and residence with a neutral view. In addition, the history of the Korean refugee policy, development process, and statistical data were presented so that they could be used for future studies of the refugee policy model in Lebanon.