The Supreme Court recently ordered the reinstatement of South Korean citizenship for siblings born to a Chinese immigrant, who had been denied citizenship due to an administrative error that happened before their birth.

The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in their administrative lawsuit against the Ministry of Justice, in which they challenged the ministry's 2019 decision that they were not South Koreans.

The siblings were born in 1998 and 2001 to a South Korean man and a Chinese-born woman, who intended to be married in 1997. But the government officials had lost the papers for the mother, which prevented them from registering as a married couple.

Despite the mix-up, the government had initially issued resident registration numbers to the siblings when their parents reported their birth in 2001 and issued resident registration cards when they became 17, both of which measures are exclusive to South Korean citizens.

"(The government) led the (plaintiffs) to believe that they had citizenship when they were minors, yet when they have become adults, administrative measures opposing that belief had been made. As a result, the plaintiffs lost an easy opportunity to become citizens, and suffered severe disadvantages," the court said in its ruling.

The family did not take measures for their children to get citizenship, even when the mother officially became a naturalized South Korean in 2017. The Justice Ministry did advise them to do so in 2013 and 2017.

The court said that this was because they were led to believe that they already were South Koreans, based on the resident registration number and the resident card they were given. It said that without such measures, the siblings would have already gone through the process to become citizens.