신분등록제도 개편논의에 있어 개인정보의 보호와 주민등록번호의 역할

Protection of Personal Information and the Roll of the Resident Registration Number in the Status Registration System

This paper examines the merits and demerits of the reorganization of the status registration system along with the discussing the methods of revision, which are ‘nuclear family-scale registration system’, ‘Individual-scale registration system’ and ‘status registration unified with the resident registration system’. The schemes, currently discussed, about the revision of status registration system all have their own merits and demerits and no matter which plan ischosen, all of them need to be supplemented for the practical use. The core perspective in reorganizing the status registration system is to understand that this system is only for announcing the principles of the substantive law on the neutral stand. If the government-led revision of civil law is to bring in the concept of the ‘family’ while aborting the Hoju system, the head of a family system, there must be appliance for registration ofannouncement of this family so that it could corresponds to the purpose of status registration system. On the other hand, nuclear family-scale registration system based on the existing system would be good in the sense of preparing for the reunified Korea. The partition of Korea mass-produced the dispersed families and the totally different system of status registration system of North and South Korea would make harder search these families. While North Korea aborted the Hoju system a long ago, South Korea still keeps the traditional Hoju system. This could be the point of contact for the dispersed families in South and North Korea. Therefore, consideration for recovering the co-essential nature of family in North and South Korea must be included in the discussion for the revision of the census registration system. The most important subject to be considered in both the current census registration system and discussion for the revision of it is the protection of the personal information. Every subject in the resident registration or status registration is closely related to personal specification. Undoubtedly, status registration is protected under the personal information protection law as one of the kinds of the official document. For the protection of personal information, there must be strict rules limiting the opening of the registration to the public. In discussion for reorganization of status registration system, the resident registration number plays a very important function as the searching tool for personal information. However, this number is criticized for damaging the dignity of human being and contains the possibility for counterfeiting or alteration. Therefore, in the revised version of status registration system, the reliance on the resident registration number for the personal specification should be reduced to secure the stability of the system.