The government selectively received family members of “special contributors” from Afghanistan, who requested to come to South Korea to escape threats of Taliban.

According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun coverage on February 14, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs limited family members when allowing the entry of 390 special Afghan contributors to South Korea on August 26-27 last year to one spouse, parents and underaged children. The decision did not take into consideration the socio-cultural characteristics of Afghanistan, which has an Islamic culture of polygyny. Reportedly, among the Afghan contributors who entered Korea at the time at least two families were unable to bring other spouses except for the one granted entry. In addition, a large number of contributors were unable to bring their adult children (ages 19 and older), and siblings, who lie outside the direct lineage, were also excluded.

Initially, these Afghan contributors asked our government to allow the entry of other family members, but the government did not accept their request. At the temporary living facilities where they resided until early this month, there was even a case where a couple fought because the husband called his wife back home too often.

The foreign ministry said, “The people selected as special contributors were Afghan employees directly hired by South Korean government facilities who had contributed to our government activities, one spouse, underaged children, and their parents and grandparents,” and explained, “We determined the range of people to transport after referring to cases of other countries, such as the U.S., U.K., and Germany.” The government further explained that they set such standards because there was no way to accept polygyny according to municipal law, such as the Civil Act and the Refugee Act. The government appears to have been concerned of deteriorating public opinion if they received a massive number of Afghan families.

However, some experts pointed out that the government’s narrow interpretation of the Afghan contributors’ right to family unity was inhumane. In recent precedents, the court moved to recognize a broader definition of a refugee’s right to family unity based on the Constitution. Last May, in a case filed by A, the father of Kim Min-hyeok, against the head of the Seoul Immigration Office to withdraw a decision that refused to grant refugee status, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, recognizing a broad definition of the right to family unity based on Article 36, Section 1 of the Constitution. The Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also recognizes a broad scope of refugee families, stating that if the head of a family is recognized as a refugee, his dependent family members are also granted refugee status.

Jang Yeong-su, a missionary who worked in Afghanistan for eleven years argued, “It is inhumane to accept only some of the family members by counting the number of wives and the age of the children in a war where bombs are falling,” and said, “The South Korean government should have accepted it as an evacuation, but they applied the concept of immigration.” He further said, “Afghans who worked for contractors in South Korean government facilities were not recognized as special contributors unlike those who were hired directly by the facilities. The criteria for determining special contributors were also vague.”

Hwang Pill-kyu, a lawyer at GongGam Human Rights Law Foundation said, “Separating family members who lived together itself is inhumane.”