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| ▲ This photo, provided by Yonhap News Television, shows Yoo Seung-jun(Steve Seung-jun Yoo). (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) – S. Korean singer Yoo Seung-jun (45·English name Steve Seung-jun Yoo) has appealed after losing his second suit, where he applied for a visa to enter Korea.
According to legal circles on May 20, Yoo appealed to the Seoul Administrative Court on Friday.
Last month, the court ruled that it was legitimate for the S. Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles to deny a visa for Yoo.
The court said, “The plaintiff deceived the government agency for military draft to illegally leave the country and obtained U.S. citizenship,” adding, “The act constitutes a threat to the maintenance of order in South Korea and the public interest.”
It added, “The presence of the plaintiff itself obviously deals a blow to Korean draftees who risk their lives for national security and their families.”
Yoo became a U.S. citizen and renounced his Korean citizenship in 2002 with the alleged goal of dodging his military duty in South Korea, just ahead of his scheduled draft as a public service worker.
Later that year, the Justice ministry imposed an entry ban on Yoo and he has since been barred from visiting the country, except on a three-day trip to mourn the death of his then fiancee's father in 2003.
Yoo raised a legal battle against the South Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles in 2015 after it refused to issue him a visa for overseas Koreans, eventually winning a Supreme Court ruling in 2020 deeming the visa refusal procedurally flawed.
Yoo applied for a visa to enter Korea again following the top court ruling, but the consulate general again turned it down, spurring Yoo to file a suit with the Seoul Administrative Court in 2020 to reverse the decision.
Delivering the ruling in favor of the visa refusal, the court ruled it was legitimate because the previous top court decision in favor of Yoo was based on procedural flaws.
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Kim Sun Min.)
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