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The National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee on Tuesday failed to pass a revision to the passport law aimed at introducing electronic passports, casting Korea¡¯s perpetual ambition to join the U.S. visa waiver program into limbo again. It is unclear whether the revision can be approved by an extra house session this month.
If it is not, joining the visa waiver program, which is contingent on e-passports, may not be possible this year.
The revision was up for debate at the house committee that day but failed to get approval due to disagreement between ruling and opposition lawmakers on whether fingerprint information should be carried on the e-passports. During parliamentary deliberations until recently, lawmakers discussed the danger that fingerprinting could raise human rights concerns and that the e-passports could lead to leaks of passport holders' personal information. The government had decided to introduce e-passports as soon as possible but delay the fingerprinting until 2010, a plan the house did not accept.
Unless the bill is passed by the extra parliamentary session this month, the issue will have to be reopened once a new National Assembly is ready after the general election in April. This will make it impossible for the government to introduce e-passports on a trial basis in March, as planned, and issue them whole scale from August. A U.S. government team is slated to come to Seoul in September to review Korea's preparations for joining the Visa Waiver program, but failure to introduce the passports by then would scupper Korean hopes to join the program this year.
A government official said, "If we fail to join the U.S. Visa Waiver Program this year, we can't rule out that the U.S. government under a new president will take a different position toward us. Our participation was nearly within reach at one stage. Now it turns out that we won¡¯t be able to join after all."
The government official asked for parliamentary cooperation, saying, "Last year, about 500,000 Koreans applied for U.S. visas. If their fees and the hours spent waiting for visa interviews are converted into money terms, the entire visa application process costs Koreans more than W100 billion (US$1=W944) a year."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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