However, tourism officials expressed concern about a negative impact on their industry.
Keywords
SEOUL, KOREA- South Korea will demand fingerprints from all adult foreign visitors by 2012 to tighten immigration controls and prevent criminals entering the country, officials said Tuesday.
The justice ministry said a bill to be submitted to parliament next month requires foreigners aged over 17 to provide prints of their index fingers and an identity photograph upon entry.
Those intending to stay more than three months must provide full fingerprints in addition to the photo.
South Korea previously took fingerprints of foreigners intending to stay for more than a year.
The requirement was abolished in 2004.
“A database of physical information on foreigners is urgently needed to stop illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists from entering the country,” said Lee Bok-Nam, an immigration official at the justice ministry.
Crimes by foreigners rose nearly fivefold over the past eight years from 4,328 in 2001 to 20,624 last year, JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported Tuesday,quoting national police data.
But tourism officials expressed concern about a negative impact on their industry.
“It will undoubtedly dent our efforts to attract even one more single foreign tourist here and to boost our tourism industry,” an official of the Korea National Tourism Organisation told AFP, declining to be named.
Seoul has declared 2010-2012 “Visit Korea” years, seeking to attract 10 million foreign tourists a year and earn 10 billion dollars in foreign currency in the first year.
The fingerprinting of foreign visitors has been in place in the United States and Japan following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Last year Britain started fingerprinting visitors from non-European Union countries.
-AFP
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