There are many reasons to emigrate from the United States; love, career, and study are just a few among them. And for just as many different reasons, some people find that once they’re overseas, their ideal path naturally leads them to the point where they choose to give up U.S. citizenship. Below, I’ve translated some South Korean media coverage about a less-common career choice for ex-Americans: the Korean military.

The first article is from earlier this month and discusses people who are in the most recent Federal Register list, while the second is from a few years ago. Don’t hold your breath for them to be featured on NBC Nightly; they’re too busy scouring the lists of ex-citizens for rich people so they can keep screaming the tiresome narrative that people giving up U.S. citizenship consist solely of “wealthy investors leaving the United States to avoid the estate tax”.

This first piece is a subsection of a larger article about the 128th graduating class of the Republic of Korea Air Force Officer Candidate School. The class includes three newly-commissioned officers who studied and lived in the U.S. for many years, but in the end relinquished their U.S. citizenship on the way to achieving their dreams in their parents’ homeland. Two of them are included among the 189 names in this quarter’s Federal Register list; the third is not.

The journalist is tiptoeing around an issue which is something of a sore point among his intended audience: South Korea itself has a very high renunciation rate, quite possibly the highest of any OECD country. In 2010, nearly twenty-three thousand gave up citizenship; this is higher than the total number of those who naturalised. The high renunciation rate is driven by a number of factors: South Korea did not allow dual citizenship until 2010 (and still do not grant automatic permission for it), they have a large diaspora many generations removed from residence in Korea (especially in Japan, which also does not allow dual citizenship), and of course they impose a duty of mandatory military service for all male citizens.

Many who have the choice find ways to get out of serving in the military, and still others try to get out but fail — but the number who chose to serve voluntarily as part of the “cover charge” for pursuing a career in South Korea is increasing. Of course, major U.S. newspapers only write about Korean Americans in the South Korean military when it happens involuntarily (e.g. here). To find English-language articles about voluntary cases like the ones discussed here, you have to look to campus newspapers and other non-mainstream sources (here and here, for example).

Lt. Kim appears in this quarter’s Federal Register list.

Military service is quite a sensitive subject in South Korea. Young Korean American men who have moved to South Korea for reasons of career, love, or study and then decide to settle down in the country face a difficult choice: two years in the Republic of Korea Army — possibly enduring bullying from other soldiers the whole time for their foreignness — or a lifetime of useless IRS paperwork. If they’re not willing take up the first burden, they won’t be able to keep South Korean citizenship, and their acquaintances and co-workers may accuse them of being unmanly draft evaders. If they don’t take up the second burden, demagogues back home may accuse them of being despicable tax evaders.

In the 1990s, not many people would have chosen the South Korean passport over the U.S. one, besides public figures and their family members. When popular rapper Yoo Seungjun tried to wriggle his way out of conscription a decade ago by naturalising as a U.S. citizen, the resulting controversy — many times larger than what Eduardo Saverin or Denise Rich faced — ended his career and resulted in his being unable to return to the country for fear of being charged as a deserter.

Lt. Lee also appears in this quarter’s Federal Register list.

In contrast to the idea that emigration leads to brain drain and permanent loss of resources to the country, from Lt. Lee’s story we can see how South Korea benefits from “brain circulation”: part of their diaspora has decided to come home, bringing valuable international experience with him. The U.S. in contrast is becoming increasingly hostile to the idea of brain circulation: unlike say Denmark it has no procedure for allowing ex-citizens to resume citizenship or even to get a work visa more easily, and legislators on both sides of the aisle see overseas citizens as nothing more than tax-evading freeloaders who are using American intellectual capital to help enemy countries.

Noh’s name has not yet appeared in the Federal Register.

The journalist who wrote this portrayal of uncomplicated patriotism reminds me of nothing so much as that NBC Nightly News host reflected in a slightly curious mirror. I highly doubt that these young men had such an easy time deciding whether or not to give up their U.S. citizenship and go into the military. It brings up issues of identity on which many people would rather not make such a definite and irrevocable decision. And of course, the nationalistic pride the journalist seeks to evoke in readers is rooted in the same part of human nature which leads legions of internet warriors to fill the comments sections of MSNBC articles with calls for Eduardo Saverin’s head.

The second article, from 2009, discusses twin brothers whose names also do not appear in the Federal Register.

Unlike the three commissioned officers discussed in the previous article, who have deep roots in both South Korea and the U.S., these twin brothers are a more typical case of “accidental Americans” — they were born in the U.S. and so got its citizenship automatically, but they moved back to South Korea at a very young age and grew up there. This article is also more “down-to-earth” than the previous one, with fewer patriotic quotes, and more discussions of practical matters.

I’m going out on a limb here, but given that they grew up in Gangneung — a coastal city which is the capital of one of the poorer regions of South Korea — that their father was in the U.S. running a business rather than studying, and then rather suddenly moved back to Korea, and the fact that they’re noncoms, I don’t think the Kim brothers are from a wealthy background. U.S. Homelanders might think that these are the precise kind of “anchor babies” who would jump at the chance to come to America — but instead they gave up citizenship as part of their efforts to make a living for themselves in the country they call home.

One last technical point: I’m not too sure whether these are cases of relinquishments or renunciations. INA 349(a)(3)(B) provides that “entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if … such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer” is one type of “expatriating act”. However, some other countries’ laws require that officers renounce all other citizenships before they are formally commissioned. This is just like the naturalisation problem: in some countries you can relinquish U.S. citizenship after naturalising, while in others you have renounce after you get your final approval letter but before you’re actually formally naturalised.