Seoul grants ‘humanitarian stay’ to Syrian asylum seekers

It is confirmed that the Korean government has granted en masse permission for humanitarian stay in Korea to a large number of Syrian asylum seekers this year.

According to the Justice Ministry on Sunday, the number of Syrian refugees who were granted permission to stay in Korea on humanitarian ground between May and September totaled 457. Out of 584 people who applied for refugee status to the Korean government, 68 have withdrawn their application and left for other countries and the ratio of permission granted has reached 88.6 percent.

For the first time ever, the government has granted en masse permission to stay in Korea on humanitarian ground to asylum seekers from a certain country. Since 1994 when Korea first introduced the asylum system, only 177 people had been granted permission for humanitarian stay through last year.

The Asylum Act provides that Korea recognizes as refugees people who stand a high chance to be persecuted due to their ethnicity, religion, nationality, affiliation with a certain social group, and political views. Foreigners can also be granted permission to stay in Korea on humanitarian ground if they stand a high chance to receive inhumane treatment or face death threats in their country, even though asylum seekers do not meet such requirements. Humanitarian stay is a lower level than recognition of asylum seekers as refugees, but they can have a stable stay in Korea because forced repatriation of them is banned and they can land job here.

As refugees have been generated en masse due to prolonging of the Syrian Civil War, the Korean government is believed to have decided to allow "legal stay" on humanitarian ground. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, more than 190,000 people have died and more than 3 million refugees have been created.

In her speech at the U.N. General Assembly last month, President Park Geun-hye said, “The world is witnessing a new type of humanitarian crisis in Syria and Iraq,” in stressing the need to provide humanitarian assistance. The government decided to provide additional 6 million U.S. dollars to Syria this year.

“Civil war does not suffice the requirements to earn refugee status,” said Han Moo-geun, head of the Korea Immigration Service. “But given that Syrians are suffering gravely due to the unending civil war in Syria, the government has made such a decision.”