Recently, the State Council passed a bill to make it mandatory for hospitals and other medical institutions to first register information about the birth of a child. The existing birth notification system requires parents to report the birth to the head of municipality within one month from the date of birth of the child. Universal Birth Registration (UBR) was created to reduce omissions in birth registration and has the added benefit of preventing child abuse by obligating medical institutions to register the birth. When the newly introduced birth notification system is implemented, the head of the medical institution where a child is born will be obliged to notify the head of the municipality of the birth. The proponents of the birth notification system argue that this system is a way to eliminate the blind spots of child abuse that existed before by allowing the state to manage all births of children. However, various controversies have arisen, including opposition from the medical community.

The birth notification system is a big issue in Korea right now, where the birth rate is the lowest in the world and continues to decline. The “Universal Birth Registration” supplements the current birth registration system, which is entirely dependent on parents, and imposes obligations on hospitals to register births if the parents do not. Now that various child abuse cases are shocking people in the news every day, the birth notification system must be mandatory to prevent such child abuse in advance and ensure that all children are fully guaranteed their rights in society.

First, all children are basically entitled to every right of society by being registered at birth. If the child's birth registration is entrusted only to the parents, some irresponsible parents may not fulfill their obligation[1] to register their child. In the case of a child whose birth registration is omitted, they will be excluded from various social welfare services and support. All children have the natural right to enter elementary and middle school and lead a healthy life as they grow up, but this is only true after their birth is registered. According to the 'Children's Birth Report Status Survey' conducted by Child Fund Korea from March to April 2021, the number of children protected by child welfare facilities without a birth report was 146 over the past two years. In addition, a total of 178 children were reported to a specialized organization as having suffered from child abuse in the past three years. According to the Ministry of Justice, as of 2020, 99.6% of children are born in a medical institution. The introduction of UBR will significantly reduce birth omissions.

Second, it can dramatically reduce the possibility of child abuse occurring. In December 2020, in Yeosu, Jeollanam-do, the tragic circumstance of a parent who left their baby's body in a refrigerator was revealed. People were shocked by this incident. The omission of birth registration was the major cause of the accident. The deceased child was born at the end of 2018 and died two months later but was left in the refrigerator for two years. The mother of the child was handed over to the prosecution on charges of child abuse and murder. What is the most shocking is that the existence of the child who died so tragically might not have been discovered at all. An expert at a child protection agency who frequented this house also said that he was unaware that the woman had had another child. This shows the hole in the birth registration system in Korea. In this case, it was an accident that occurred without birth registration for no reason, but more circumstances make it difficult to proceed with the birth registration, such as a single mother or divorcees, financial difficulties, or an illegitimate child. Some make such illegal choices because there is no way for state agencies to first identify and recognize the existence of a child. Since the child's existence is not recognized from the outside, the possibility of being exposed to child abuse naturally increases. To prevent this in advance, the UBR should become compulsory.

Third, UBR has already been successfully implemented in other countries. In the UK, when a baby is born in a hospital, a health insurance number is issued through the hospital's own registration system. Through this number, information about the baby is transmitted to national institutions, allowing the state to preemptively register all babies who were born with a birth certificate and register the them with the registrar. Canada and Germany also require both parents and hospitals to register births, preventing babies from missing the birth registration as much as possible. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child also published “Final Views on the 5th and 6th National Report of the Republic of Korea” in 2019 and recommended “simplify[ing] the registration process so that all children can be registered immediately after birth, regardless of their parents’ legal status or place of birth.” As UBR has already been successfully implemented in many other countries, Korea should also do the same to provide equal opportunities for all children to live.

The future of this country is ultimately in the hands of our children. Therefore, we need to respond sensitively and deal with issues related to children, including child abuse and birth rate. Most of the reasons that the medical community opposes the birth notification system are that government agencies are outsourcing their work to private medical institutions. They also argue that when a stateless person or an illegal resident gives birth, information related to birth registration can be filled out falsely and cannot even be checked properly right away. However, in the end, supplementing the system and establishing an accurate verification process can solve this problem. It is too harsh to prevent children's presence from being reported just because they have the potential to be confused. The UBR should be made compulsory to guarantee the right of all children to be healthy and protected in society.