Ease of name change process allows criminals to flout law

Police in February faced a perplexing situation while searching for a 30-year-old man surnamed Choi who fled after stealing a wallet at a nail art store. Investigators tracked him using his name but caught a different person with the same surname.

The suspect’s appearance was identical to what witnesses described, but the names were different. Choi was found to have attempted to change his given name in January and received final approval Feb. 12, about a week after committing his crime.

Changing one`s given name was a difficult process in Korea until 2005, when the Supreme Court revised a policy to broadly allow changing the first name in the context that “an individual’s right to pursue personality and happiness should not be infringed upon.” Until then, changing a given name had been difficult because authorities judged that confusion of individual identities would destabilize "legal relations."

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, however, many have received permission to change their names, leading to more abuse. They have exploited the method of changing their given names to dodge police and hide their crimes.

The number of people who applied to change their given names, surged from 33,210 in 2000 to 165,924 in 2010. Police say thousands of them have changed their names to hide their identities.

One teenager, 17, who had a criminal record for theft, changed his name last year by citing bad connotation of the name, and was arrested for stealing smartphones from middle school students in April this year. His acquaintances had called him by his former name.

In the course of searching for the suspect, police were confused due to the incompatibility of his two identities. They had trouble confirming his real identity because of the different names he went by at school and in the government registration system.

In 2009, a 26-year-old student of a university in Seoul got a senior classmate to hack into a server of her school to change her grade from "F" to "A." The crime was exposed and the suspect was given a suspended sentence for the crime. Her parents, who wanted her to become a broadcast journalist, changed her name after news spread of her cheating. Able to hide her criminal record, the hacker now works as an announcer and anchor for a broadcast network using a new name.

Critics in the judicial community say the Supreme Court has too broadly allowed name changing, which has led to a setback in legal stability. They call problematic the tendency of people to want to change their names only by citing personal reasons such as “bad nuances of their original names,” as well as approval of their intended name changes irrespective of purpose.

Another problem is the lack of process to check if a person who applied for a name change is under investigation or has a criminal record. For someone to apply for a name change, all he or she need do is submit basic residential and family registry certifications plus an application form.

Certification of one’s criminal record is not a document required for submission. A judge at one district court branch said, “Even a branch office receives 40 to 50 applications for name changes per week,” adding, “We generally grant permission unless special things need to be considered because checking their criminal records with police is too cumbersome. We also have too many other tasks to handle.”

Yet just three minutes was needed for judges to review more than 10 documents submitted by people who applied for name changes. Lawyer Jeong Sang-soo said, “The right of a person to change his or her name because of hard times due to a bizarre name shouldn`t be restricted. But submission of documents on criminal records should be required to minimize side effects.”

hjson@donga.com dong@donga.com