Why South Korea is not a reciprocating territory
India's currently gazetted list of Section 44A CPC reciprocating territories includes the United
Kingdom, Singapore, Bangladesh, the UAE, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, the Cook Islands
(including Niue), Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Hong Kong, and Aden. South Korea does not appear on any version
of this list found in this platform's research. This platform could not pull the single, current, primary
Ministry of Law and Justice Gazette notification during this research, and sourced the list from secondary
legal commentary instead, so it should be verified against the current Gazette notification before relying
on it for a specific case.
The Section 13 fresh-suit route for enforcing a South Korean judgment
Because South Korea is not a reciprocating territory, a money decree or divorce decree from a South
Korean court cannot be directly executed in India under Section 44A. Instead, the judgment must be relied
upon as a cause of action in a fresh civil suit under Section 13 of the CPC, where an Indian court will
treat the foreign judgment as conclusive on the matters directly adjudicated, subject to the exceptions
listed in Section 13 itself (such as the foreign court lacking jurisdiction, the judgment not being on the
merits, or it being obtained by fraud).
Cross-border custody involving South Korea's own citizenship and military-service rules
Because South Korea's Nationality Act generally does not permit dual citizenship, and because Korean
men face compulsory military-service obligations that interact with citizenship elections around age 18, a
cross-border custody dispute involving a mixed Indian-Korean family can raise citizenship questions in
addition to the standard Section 44A/Section 13 enforcement question -- particularly for a Korean-national
or dual-national child. Anyone facing such a dispute should confirm the child's and family members' current
citizenship status and any applicable Korean family-court jurisdiction with counsel qualified in Korean
family law, rather than assuming Indian and Korean law interact the same way they would for a country with
more permissive dual-citizenship rules.
Common mistakes NRIs and Indian-origin families connected to South Korea make with this topic:
- Assuming a South Korean divorce decree is automatically enforceable in India, without accounting
for South Korea's absence from the Section 44A reciprocating-territories list.
- Overlooking how Korea's restrictive dual-citizenship and military-service rules can complicate a
cross-border custody matter involving a Korean-national child.
- Not budgeting time and cost for the Section 13 fresh-suit process, which is slower than direct
execution would be.
