Language trips up Korean man carrying PHL passport

HE carried a Filipino passport but could not converse in Filipino. That proved to be the undoing of a Korean national whom immigration agents nabbed for misrepresenting himself as a Filipino while about to board a Cebu Pacific flight for Saigon.

Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said Korean Kwak Dong Hee, 26, was apprehended last December 28 at the departure area of the Naia Terminal 3.

Kwak spent the New Year behind bars at the BI Detention Facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig, while waiting for the results of deportation proceedings.

Kwak assumed the name of one Erik Nacis, purportedly born to a Korean man and a Filipina from Meycauayan, Bulacan, in 1992.

However, the immigration officer who processed his passport became suspicious after noticing he could not converse in Filipino.

Kwak also had trouble communicating in any local dialect.

“It was during questioning that he admitted his true identity as a Korean citizen and that the Philippine passport he presented was fraudulently acquired,” Morente said.

Immigration supervisor Carlo Gomez of the BI Travel Control and Enforcement Unit, said Kwak confessed during the interview that both his parents are Koreans and that he illegally obtained his Philippine passport for P120,000 from a compatriot in the Philippines.

Gomez said it was also the Korean, whose name Kwak refused to divulge, who processed and acquired the birth certificate found in his possession.

“Our records check showed that Kwak last arrived in the Philippines on August 27, 2015; hence, he has already been overstaying for more than three years,” Gomez added.

Morente commended the efforts of Gomez and other members of the TCEU.

“These schemes will not pass. Our officers have a trained eye in detecting fraud.” Recto L. Mercene