가족관계등록제도의 개선방안 연구

A Study on the Improvement of Family Relationship Registration System

This study aims to review the implementation and draw up improvement plans of the Act on the Registration, etc. of Family Relationship (hereinafter referred to as the “Family Relationship Registration Act”). In order to investigate actual problems facing the general public in the implementation of the family relationship registration system, surveys had been carried out among various people working in the area; public officials in charge of the implementation of the family relationship registration system, legal experts such as lawyers and scholars, and counselors in relevant institutions and organizations. Based on the aforementioned research, an improvement plan is made as follows: First, this study proposes two improvement methods to overcome the patriarchal family system and the former family register system; a proposal to abolish the place of registration site system or to restrict the display of one’s place of registration site. Second, the adoption of “birth notification system” in order to ensure the authenticity of family relationship registers, especially that of its reporting systems, such as birth and death registration. The current birth registration system allowing “the identity verification by knowledgeable persons(including neighbors, friends, relatives, etc.)” should only be applied in very exceptional cases, while the procedures for registering births by unmarried fathers should be improved through the adoption of birth notification system or simple procedures; such as, through submitting paternity test results provided by authorized institutions. Likewise, in order to ensure the authenticity of death registration, it is necessary to consider adopting and abolishing the system aforementioned, for improving birth registration system. Third, in order to improve the protection of personal information, the current “Partial Verification System” needs to be actively utilized and issuance of partial verification certificates should be put into practice as a default rule. The range of people eligible to request the issuance of certificates should be further limited in order to prevent unnecessary leaks and abuse of personal information. An administrative disposition, then, should be prepared as well to impose restriction on the violation of the rules limiting the requesters eligible for applying for certificates. Fourth, reflecting the era of globalization, administrative procedures need to be segmentalized; establishing standard operation guidelines for each nationality, institutionalizing the issuance of English certificates for family relationship, and allowing the entry of both Korean and English names of spouses from foreign countries in their passports.