Korean Citizenship Ceremony: Oath and Certificate After Approval

Receiving notice that your naturalization is approved does not make you a Korean citizen on the spot. The Ministry of Justice says you acquire nationality when you receive the certificate of nationality, and that you cannot acquire it if you do not attend the ceremony. At the ceremony you take the citizen's oath and receive the certificate. The date, place and items to bring follow your notice, so check it as soon as it arrives.

Approval and citizenship fall on different days

Before the Nationality Act amendment that took effect on 20 December 2018, notifying the applicant of approval was the end of the process. Now there is one more step after approval: the ceremony. So there is a gap between the approval notice and acquiring nationality, and during that gap you are still a foreign national.

• Approval → the Minister of Justice approves and notifies the applicant
• Ceremony notice → you receive the date, place and what to bring
• Attending the ceremony → you take the oath and receive the certificate
• Acquiring nationality → you are a Korean citizen from the moment you receive the certificate

On the day

The ceremony is held on a date set by the immigration office. There is a part where you take the citizen's oath before the Minister of Justice, and the oath is in Korean. People exempted from the naturalization interview are not exempted from this.

• ID → bring your alien registration card or passport, as your notice says
• The notice → check the date, time and place once more
• Time to spare → immigration offices may have entry procedures, so arrive early
• If you are making a pledge not to exercise a foreign nationality → extra items are sometimes listed. Follow your notice

If you cannot go that day

If you do not attend, you have not acquired nationality and wait for another date. If you have a reason, you submit a statement of the dates you can attend and why you cannot attend by the deadline in your notice, and a new date is announced. Some notices give the deadline as three days before and others as seven, so there is no single answer. I could not find guidance saying someone else can collect the certificate for you. Ask the office handling your case.

What is left after you receive it

• Foreign nationality → the Nationality Act sets one year from the day you acquire Korean nationality to renounce your foreign nationality. If you qualify for an exception, there is a route of pledging not to exercise it in Korea instead. We cover that in our article on the path from visa to citizenship
• Certificate of nationality acquisition → guidance says you can also obtain this at Gov24 or an immigration office, apart from the certificate itself
• Residence registration and similar → as a citizen there are reports to file. Ask the ceremony notice and your local office which ones and where
• Children → guidance says minors who acquire nationality together with a parent (accompanying acquisition) are not covered by the ceremony. Check their procedure separately

How to renounce a foreign nationality, and what proof is needed, differs by country and needs guidance from that country's embassy. The deadline is one year, so it is safer to start looking right after the ceremony.

It comes up in the interview too

This procedure also appears as questions in the naturalization interview. Among the real practice questions we compiled are these.

귀화허가자가 국적증서를 받는 행사는 무엇입니까? — 국적증서 수여식

국적증서를 받기 전에 대한민국 국민으로서 책임을 다하겠다고 하는 것은 무엇입니까? — 국민선서

You may know both terms by eye and still stall when you have to say them. Our service lets you hear such questions in an interviewer's voice and practise answering aloud.

This article is not legal advice. Procedures and deadlines can change and differ by person. Check current guidance with HiKorea (hikorea.go.kr), your immigration office, or the 1345 Immigration Contact Center.