Apostille Korea Handles Overseas Document Issuance and Authentication for Multicultural Residents Papers needed for employment, marriage and study in Korea must be issued in each country the applicant once lived in, then notarised and authenticated there, and that structure is where the burden sits.

Apostille Korea said it operates a service that obtains and authenticates overseas civil documents on behalf of multicultural residents and foreign nationals living in Korea. Preparing for education, employment or marriage in Korea involves documents that must be issued and authenticated in another country, and handling those steps alone has long been criticised as complicated.

Attitudes have improved; the paperwork has not

Public attitudes towards multicultural residents have improved steadily through school curricula, government policy and broadcast programming. Separate from that shift, one area where the inconvenience remains is the issuance of civil documents. The number of multicultural residents pursuing education, employment or marriage in Korea keeps growing, yet some of the documents that process requires must be issued and authenticated abroad. The clearest example is the criminal record certificate requested during hiring. A Korean national simply obtains the domestic criminal record certificate at home, while a multicultural resident must bring back an equivalent document from the country where they lived. The document serves the same purpose, but the starting point is entirely different.

Different papers by country, and more steps before submission

Overseas criminal record certificates differ in form from country to country, including China's no-criminal-record certificate, the FBI Check in the United States and the RCMP check in Canada, and as a rule the applicant must obtain them in person locally. Anyone with residence history in several countries has to go through the issuing procedure separately in each of them. Having someone on the ground to handle the errand helps somewhat, but it does not change how hard it is to pin down each embassy's document requirements and processing times. Even once the certificate is in hand, submitting it in Korea requires local notarisation followed by an apostille or consular legalisation. The same applies to overseas academic verification, family relationship records and marriage records, and the identical sequence covers marriage, immigration, residence and study matters handled in Korea. Apostille Korea checks each country's administrative and translation requirements and handles the process from issuance through authentication.

Frequently asked questions

Source: 아시아뉴스통신 · 2017-06-19