Korea's Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the country's lack of legal provisions for registering the births of foreign nationals born in the country is unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that the state had the responsibility to guarantee the right to immediate birth registrations for all individuals irrespective of their nationality or legal status. The decision came after an undocumented Vietnamese national filed a petition in 2022 for the court to review the absence of such regulations following the birth of his child in Korea in 2019. The child could not be immediately registered locally due to the lack of registration rules and the case was further complicated by the undocumented status of both parents. Foreign nationals typically register their child's birth in Korea through their own country's embassy before registering the child as a foreign national with the immigration office. The child's birth was only registered in 2020 in accordance with Vietnamese law. The court said nationality should not be a factor in guaranteeing the right to birth registrati