Parental travel consent has no effect without the guardian's guarantee A consent form issued through a travel agency was found to contain only a liability disclaimer for the agency instead of the guardian's guarantee.

Apostille Korea said it has launched a worldwide document package for travel involving minors. Parental travel consent, a required document for a minor travelling abroad, must state that the person with parental authority agreed to the trip, and without that content it has no effect in practice.

A form that said something else

A resident of Suwon planned to travel to Vietnam alone with her grandchild. While preparing for the trip she learned that minors need legal supporting documents to leave the country and asked her travel agency for its package of documents for minors. On the day before departure, however, she noticed something odd in the parental travel consent she had received through the agency. The form should have contained a guarantee from the person with parental authority regarding the trip of a minor travelling without that person, but the document she received stated only that any problem arising during a trip accompanying a minor was the responsibility of the traveller rather than the agency. When she consulted a specialist office she was told that a parental travel consent without the guardian's guarantee has no effect in practice, and the agency's head office replied that there was no clear internal guidance on the matter and that it would take steps to avoid the problem in future.

Document requirements for a minor's departure

The first thing travellers should check is who is travelling together. If a minor departs with both parents, the Family Relationship Certificate alone is enough, but because it is issued only in Korean it must also be translated into the language of the country where it will be submitted and notarised. If the child travels with only the father or only the mother, or with a third-party escort who is not a parent, a notarised Family Relationship Certificate must be accompanied by parental travel consent showing that the person with parental authority agreed to the trip. Embassies worldwide, including those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Guam and Saipan, publish these rules under strengthened immigration law and state that entry or departure may be refused if the documents are not sufficient. Because the requirement has not been established internationally for long, however, explanations differ between travel agencies, embassies and notary offices, and travellers are being caught out. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it announces changes through various channels and that the most important step is for each traveller to check and prepare the documents in advance, while one travel agency said nothing had been passed down from its head office or from diplomatic bodies and that it directs customers to obtain the documents themselves.

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Source: 산업일보 · 2017-05-16