[Herald Interview] Korea building law database system for foreign nationals: minister

The South Korean government is stepping up its efforts to make the country more foreigner-friendly by building an accessible database system of the country's laws and legislation, the minister of government legislation told the Korea Herald earlier this month.

As South Korea pushes to embrace foreign workers and immigrants to address population decline, the Ministry of Government Legislation -- a body focused on making the nation's legal system clear, consistent, and accessible both domestically and internationally -- believes its work is essential for the nation's future.

“With the country’s workforce shrinking due to low birth rate, a solution to the deepening demographic crisis is to bring in more foreign workers,” Lee Wan-kyu, minister of government legislation said in an interview at the Government Complex Seoul.

“The database system is all about helping the people adjust and rebuild their lives here – whether it’s a visa problem or giving birth and sending their children to school and renting homes, they are going to need to have access to the country’s law and legislation to navigate their way,” he explained.

Intending to lower the entry barrier of Korea’s legal system for foreign nationals, the Ministry of Government Legislation currently operates the Easy Law service which provides summaries of the country’s laws grouped by category in English and 11 other languages: Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian, Simplified Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Mongolian, Nepali, Thai, Uzbek and Vietnamese. The ministry translates and uploads around 180 Korean laws on the website annually and has built a database comprising 2,700 laws translated into several languages.

But building a database is merely the first stage in the ministry’s plan to help lower barriers for foreign nationals, according to Lee.

“The second step is to actually educate foreigners. Our employees regularly visit institutions and centers across the country for immigrants and foreign workers here to teach in programs that could provide useful legal information for them,” he said.

This year, the ministry has run such programs in 16 institutions nationwide, with plans to expand next year.

Besides helping foreign nationals better understand Korean law, the ministry is at the forefront of a plan to launch an intergovernmental panel in the Asian region to help officials draft future-oriented legislation.

Last year, the ministry hosted a symposium to promote the idea with officials and experts from six other Asian countries – Laos, Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand – in attendance. The ministry’s goal is to launch the panel as early as next year.

“It’s like the European Union sharing common regulations and legal ideas – this helps businesses in one country smoothly enter and thrive in their neighboring markets because it helps them comprehend the law in the other country better,” the minister said.

Increasing cross-border cooperation in the Asian region to explore future-oriented ideas that could steer their respective legal systems in the right direction is a key purpose of the panel, the minister noted.

“There are councils and panels affiliated with the EU that oversee such regulations and whether they can be adopted in its member nations. We plan to do the same thing as this would help our businesses thrive in other Asian markets.”

Lee explained that with the Asian economies having developed at a rapid pace in recent decades, it is time to start building their own legal systems.

“(By the end of the 19th century and throughout the beginning of the 20th), many Asian countries have adopted the Western systems of law and government. But as Asian countries saw their own unique rapid industrial and economic development in recent decades, the so-called Western systems don’t always fit into our situations and interests anymore.”

As a legal expert, Lee stressed the importance of building a preemptive and sustainable legislative system to better brace for the future.

“We have to be cautious when meddling with laws, but there is a need for legal experts within the government to be aware of the pace of development of future technologies,” he said.

“For example, with AI, there needs to be legislation and law that supports the technology and the industry here on one side. On the other side, there needs to be a part that regulates the industry and those who abuse it.”

The latest surge in deepfake sex crimes here is an example of the government's and the legal authorities' failure to preemptively counter crimes related to future technologies, Lee pointed out.

"The legislation with such future technologies needs to be carefully mapped out before related crimes happen. It is why we launched a team earlier this year that works as an intra-government think tank to come up with sustainable legislative ideas ... that could bolster our legal system as we head into the future."

The Ministry of Government Legislation oversees government legislation, examines laws and regulations, provides statutory interpretation and modification, and supports executive agencies in drafting a bill.

Lee is a former prosecutor who became the minister of government legislation in May 2022.

Lee, 61, has a prosecutorial career spanning over three decades.

Lee served in key roles in five different prosecutors' offices, including as a deputy chief prosecutor at the Seoul Northern District Prosecutor's Office and Cheongju District Prosecutor's Office, after passing the state bar exam in 1990. After wrapping up his career as a prosecutor, Lee then served as an attorney for a few years before accepting his current vice-ministerial level position.

Lee was an advisor to the political affairs and judiciary division under President Yoon Suk Yeol's transition committee in 2022.

Born in 1961, he is a native of Incheon and holds a bachelor's degree in law from Seoul National University. He earned both his master's degree and Ph.D. in law from the same university as well.