Gov't to prevent illegal receipt of benefits for children on extended stays overseas

Real-time monitoring of immigration records to be provided for Welfare Ministry

South Korea on Friday will set up a real-time monitoring system of temporary passports issued to children born overseas, to prevent their parents from illegally receiving related benefits while the children are outside the country.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Thursday the system will be set up in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Justice, and resident registration will be linked to the passport information system.

This is to ensure that the authorities can accurately track the immigration records of children who are born outside the country. Child-related benefits are suspended for children who stay in another country for 90 days or more.

The Welfare Ministry checks whether a family is still eligible for benefits via the Ministry of Justice's immigration service.

Children born in other countries can be issued a temporary passport containing only the name and date of birth, but the passport is not linked to other existing systems because there is no resident registration number.

Because of this limitation, a child who stayed outside the country for 90 days or more could still be receiving benefits, even though his or her eligibility should be temporarily suspended during the extended stay.

The government previously conducted manual inspections of the immigration information for such children, by receiving copies of the temporary passport and linking it to the resident registration system. This procedure was done once a year, resulting in hundreds of cases of benefits being paid illegally.

In 2024, the Welfare Ministry verified the immigration records related to 26,433 temporary passports for children born outside Korea, and found that 605 children were receiving benefits after losing eligibility due to extended stays in foreign countries.

The ministry pointed out that this leads to an unnecessary administrative process that puts a burden on related organizations, which can be avoided if the information related to the temporary passports is sent directly to the system related to social welfare.

Starting Friday, families requesting child-related benefits must notify the authorities on whether the child has been issued a temporary passport. This allows officials to register the related information.

"The overhaul has been selected as a task of the national normalization project, and it is a case where inter-ministry cooperation has helped reduce irrationality and inefficiency in providing welfare benefits," a Welfare Ministry official said, vowing to continue to make the welfare administration process more efficient.

The Lee Jae Myung administration announced the national normalization project in May, outlining 164 primary tasks to root out practices and systems that are out of date, illegal, irrational or against the public sentiment.