A Korean court ruled that passport holders cannot change the Romanized spelling of their surname solely based on personal preferences if there is no practical inconvenience in daily life.
According to legal sources on Monday, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled against the 36-year-old plaintiff surnamed Lee in a lawsuit filed against the foreign minister to overturn the government’s refusal to change the spelling of his passport surname from “Lee” to “Yi.”
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20260310/lee-or-yi-south-korean-court-rejects-passport-surname-spelling-change
Posted by MajlisPerbandaranKL
3 Comments
Revised Romanization kinda sucks
I think the issue stems from this part:
>The plaintiff also claimed that when he applied for the passport, he spelled his surname “Yi,” but a government official changed it to “Lee” before issuing the document. He said he requested his name to be spelled “Yi” when he applied for the passport a second time, but was told the change is not permitted, so he reluctantly received it with “Lee.”
It’s not so much that “Yi” isn’t legally allowed in the first place, but rather, a certain government official’s unilateral decision to issue it as “Lee” in this particular case, as it has once been accepted, can’t be changed back. Spelling of your name in English is normally at your personal discretion, but passport names are sort of “set in stone”. So there should be some sort of verification step before it gets irreversibly inked like this.
E