Korean Government make a public to submit the “Apostille” for the legal foreign document.

I.       Overview

From 11^th November 2014, Ministry of Justice (“MOJ”) made a public to change the filing process of the foreign legal documents as per “The Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents”, the Apostille Convention. Therefore when company or individual want to submit the legal foreign documents to Korean government, the documents which are prepared by the foreigners must be attached the Apostille seal if the countries are joined the Apostille Convention. If do not joined the Apostille Convention, it still must be confirmed and sealed by their consular official in addition of the local notarisation.

II.      What's the Apostille Convention.

The Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, the Apostille Convention, or the Apostille Treaty is an international treaty drafted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. It specifies the modalities through which a document issued in one of the signatory countries can be certified for legal purposes in all the other signatory states. Such a certification is called an apostille (French: certification). It is an international certification comparable to a notarisation in domestic law, and normally supplements a local notarisation of the document.

III.    Procedure

Apostilles are affixed by Competent Authorities designated by the government of a state which is party to the convention. A list of these authorities is maintained by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Examples of designated authorities are embassies, ministries, courts or (local) governments. For example, in the United States, the Secretary of State of each state and his or her deputies are usually competent authorities. In the United Kingdom, all apostilles are issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Milton Keynes.

To be eligible for an apostille, a document must first be issued or certified by an officer recognised by the authority that will issue the apostille. For example, in the US state of Vermont, the Secretary of State maintains specimen signatures of all notaries public, so documents that have been notarised are eligible for apostilles. Likewise, courts in the Netherlands are eligible of placing an apostille on all municipal civil status documents directly. In some cases, intermediate certifications may be required in the country where the document originates before it will be eligible for an apostille. For example, in New York City, the Office of Vital Records (which issues, among other things, birth certificates) is not directly recognised by the New York Secretary of State. As a consequence, the signature of the City Clerk must be certified by the County Clerk of New York County to make the birth certificate eligible for an apostille. ^[7] In Japan all the official documents are issued in Japanese language, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA, JAPAN) then provides an apostille for these documents. In India the apostille certification can be obtained from the Ministry of External Affairs.

IV.    Required Information

The apostille itself is a stamp or printed form consisting of 10 numbered standard fields. On the top is the text APOSTILLE, under which the text Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961 (French for Hague Convention of 5 October 1961) is placed. This text must be written in French for the Apostille to be valid (article 4 of the Convention). In the numbered fields the following information is added:

Country ... [e.g. Hong Kong, China]
This public document

has been signed by [e.g. Henry Cho]

acting in the capacity of [e.g. Notary Public]

bears the seal/stamp of [e.g. High Court of Hong Kong]
Certified

at [e.g. Hong Kong]

the ... [e.g. 16th Apr.2014]

by ... [e.g. the governor of the special administrative district of Hong Kong, China]

No ... [e.g. 2536218517]

Seal/stamp ... {of the authority giving the apostille}

Signature

The information can be placed on the (back of the) document itself, or attached to the document as an allonge.

V.     Eligible Documents

Four types of documents are mentioned in the convention;

1.     Court documents

2.     Administrative documents (e.g. civil status documents)

3.     Notarial acts

4.     Official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures. All educational, non-educational documents, commercial documents.

-       Sourced from Wikipedia