130 Korean-Chinese rounded up for false IDs

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said Sunday that it has ferreted out 130 Korean-Chinese immigrants who re-entered the country with forged identities after being deported for crime or staying illegally.

The office said it has arrested 11 of them and booked 15 others on charges of violating the immigration law, while putting another four on the wanted list.

The action against the illegal immigrants came after the prosecution launched a special crackdown jointly with the Korea Immigration Service.

By using a facial recognition system, investigators looked into about 94,400 Korean Chinese workers who entered the country between 2003 and 2011.

The system requires a foreigner to have his or her face scanned at the airports and other gateways when entering Korea. It was scrapped once in 2003 due to privacy concerns but it was reintroduced to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The latest crackdown came after a growing concern over xenophobia since Wu Yuanchun, a 42-yearold Korean Chinese worker kidnapped and murdered a 29-year-old woman in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, in April. He was sentenced to death on June 15, but he has appealed.

The prosecution found that 130 of the targeted workers had been deported in the past on various criminal charges, including murder, rape, fraud, and passport forgery.

The suspects sneaked into Korea again after forging their identities such as names and the date of birth in their own country, and having passports issued with the new information.

One of the arrested is a 61-year-old man, surnamed Kim, who was deported twice each in 2000 and 2004 for holding fake residence cards. He managed to reenter Korea repeatedly with forged identities.

“Every time he was kicked out, he persistently sneaked in again and again with three different identities,” an investigator said. “For instance, he changed his last name from Kim to Shin and then Yang, while using a different year of birth _ 1941, 1947 and 1949.”

The prosecution estimates more than 1,400 Korean Chinese immigrants have used forged identities to work and live here.

The authorities cited China’s loose identification registration system as one reason for the Korean-Chinese forging their identities to re-enter Korea after deportation.

“China has a vast population, and its population control system has not been fully computerized,” the prosecutor said. “One can easily get a new ID or a new passport if he or she pays some money to a broker.”

The prosecution said it will step up its crackdown on illegal Korean Chinese immigrants, especially those who have criminal records. <The Korea Times/Yi Whan-woo>

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