Korean Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions translates Korean documents into English and English documents into Korean for use in the United States. The immigration work is built on the family relations registry that replaced the old household register in 2008, usually the detailed Basic Certificate and Family Relation Certificate as a pair. Every certified translation carries a signed Certificate of Translation Accuracy, and a two-certificate set is generally ready within 24 hours.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

Korea is the country where clients most often ask for a birth certificate and are told there is not one. South Korea issues no standalone birth certificate in the American sense. What exists is a set of extracts from a family relations registry maintained under the Supreme Court of Korea, and which extract you need depends on what you are proving. Order the wrong one and the file goes back a month.

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
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• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Certified Korean Translation for USCIS

For a Korean-born applicant the State Department reciprocity schedule asks for two documents together, the Basic Certificate and the Family Relation Certificate, both in the detailed version and both issued within the previous year. The Basic Certificate carries the individual's own facts: birth, death, nationality, name changes. The Family Relation Certificate shows parents, spouse and children. Between them they do the work an American birth certificate does, which is why sending one without the other is the most common reason a Korean packet comes back.

Both are ordered at a local issuing office, a si, gu, eup or myeon office, with a Korean ID, or by a qualifying family member on the applicant's behalf. They are not tied to the place of birth, so a relative in Seoul can obtain a certificate for a birth registered in Jeju. Certificate format is described on the certified translation page and the form-by-form requirements on the USCIS translation page.

• Basic Certificate and Family Relation Certificate, detailed versions (birth certificate translation)
• Marriage Relation Certificate for a spousal petition (marriage certificate translation)
• Adoption and full adoption relation certificates (adoption documents)
• Criminal record certificates and court judgments
• Passports, resident registration cards and bank statements

Korean Family Register Translation Before and After 2008

The change matters to anyone whose case reaches back more than twenty years. On 1 January 2008 the Act on the Registration of Family Relations replaced the hoju system, the household register headed by a male family head under whom everyone else was recorded by their relationship to him. The Constitutional Court had held that arrangement unconstitutional on gender equality grounds. The register that replaced it is built around the individual rather than the household.

Older events live in older paperwork. A person who lost Korean nationality before 2008, or a death reported before that date, may be documented by the closed family census register, the jejeok deungbon, which the reciprocity schedule accepts in place of the newer pair. It is laid out differently, dense with vertical columns and kinship terms that have no tidy English equivalent. We translate it as a table and keep those terms with a note, rather than flattening a paternal and a maternal grandmother into one word.

Korean Name Romanization in Certified Translation

Three families of romanization are in circulation and all three turn up in one case file. Revised Romanization is the current official system, McCune-Reischauer preceded it and still appears in older official material, and many people simply chose a spelling that looked right when they first got a passport. Kim, Gim; Park, Bak, Pak; Lee, Yi, Rhee, I. None of these is a mistake.

Our practice is to take the spelling from the passport the person is using, print the hangul beside it, and where a relative's passport is not available, apply Revised Romanization and say on the translation that we did. Given names get the same treatment, hyphens included, because Min-ji and Minji are both defensible and only one is on the document in front of the officer.

Korean Apostille and Certified Document Translation

South Korea has been in the Hague Apostille Convention since 14 July 2007, so a Korean public document carries an apostille rather than consular legalization. The work is split between two ministries: the Ministry of Justice handles documents connected with the courts, notarial acts and certificates placed on privately signed documents, and the foreign ministry handles the administrative ones. Family relations certificates are issued by the courts, which surprises people who expect a civil affairs office.

Attach the apostille before translation so the whole package goes into English at once. More on the apostille translation page, and on legal translation where a Korean judgment or contract is bound for a US court.

Korean Diploma and Academic Transcript Translation

Korean universities issue clean, well-organized transcripts, which makes this easier work than most, but two things need care. Grade scales vary by institution, so a note goes with the figures rather than a converted number. And departmental and degree names are often translated inconsistently by the university itself across documents for the same student. We keep the university's own English title where it prints one, and flag it when the institution has given two.

Transcripts for licensing boards, admissions offices and evaluators such as WES are covered on the diploma translation and academic transcript translation pages.

Korean Translation Cost and Turnaround

Korean prices above the European languages, because the translator pool here is smaller and the source text is dense. A certified page runs from around $24.95 as a market figure, with running text quoted per source unit from roughly $0.14. Family relations certificates are printed, legible and quick, usually out within 24 hours for the standard pair. A jejeok deungbon or a long court judgment takes two to five business days. Ranges are set out on the pricing page.

Korean Interpreters for Court, Hospital and USCIS Interviews

Spoken Korean raises a problem the documents do not. Korean has little regional variation that would trouble an interpreter, but it has grammatical levels of politeness, and an interpreter who addresses an elderly witness in plain speech can lose that witness's cooperation inside a few minutes. Register is most of the assignment. Speakers who grew up in North Korea are a separate question again, with vocabulary that has drifted from southern usage. See Korean interpreters for hearings, depositions, medical appointments and immigration interviews.

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