South Korea’s Constitutional Court has ruled that a provision limiting the Chinese characters that can be used when registering a child’s name at birth does not violate the Constitution.
According to the legal community on Saturday, the court upheld the provision in Article 44(3) of the Family Relations Registration Act by a 5-4 vote, rejecting a constitutional complaint challenging the phrase “commonly used Chinese characters.”
The petitioner, identified only as A, reported the birth of a daughter using the character “婡” (read as “rae,” meaning “pretty”) in the child’s name. But the official handling the filing recorded the name in the family register only in Hangul, saying the character was not included among “commonly used Chinese characters” under a Supreme Court rule issued pursuant to Article 44(3). A argued the provision infringed the right to choose a child’s name.
Article 44(3) provides that a child’s name must be written in Hangul or in commonly used Chinese characters, and that the scope of such characters is set by Supreme Court rules.
The court said there was no need to overturn its July 2016 precedent, which found a substantively similar provision constitutional and not in violation of the principle against excessive restrictions.
The court said a child’s registered name is the basis for forming social relationships and should be recorded using characters that members of society can actually read and use. It also cited the vast number of Chinese characters and the unclear boundaries of their use, saying the range of “commonly used” characters must be defined in advance to register Chinese-character names in the computerized family-registration system.
It noted that the Supreme Court has periodically expanded the list of Chinese characters permitted for personal names through rule revisions. Since the earlier precedent, the list has been revised three more times, increasing by more than 1,000 characters to 9,389, the court said.
The court also said remedies exist, including registering newly added characters through a name-change process or a supplemental birth-registration procedure. Even if a noncommonly used character cannot be entered in official records, parents may still use their preferred character privately, it said, concluding the restriction on naming freedom is not severe.
Justices Jeong Jeong-mi, Kim Bok-hyeong, Ma Eun-hyeok and Oh Young-jun dissented, saying the provision violates the principle against excessive restrictions and infringes the freedom to choose a child’s name.
They said the abstract possibility that the list may be revised in the future does not resolve the current infringement, and that ordinary people cannot reasonably predict which characters will be deemed “commonly used” and selected for the approved list.
A court official said the 5-4 decision was based on the view that the trend toward expanding the approved list and changes in the share of Chinese-character use do not weaken the need for limits, and that use of nonapproved characters remains allowed in the private sphere.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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