Poster #18 - Checks and balances, or one-mind in two bodies? Examining the Administrative-Judicial Dynamics in Refugee Decision-Making

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Institutional checks are often assumed to function as safeguards against executive overreach. Yet the relationship between administrative and judicial bodies may not always conform to a strict model of checks and balances; rather, it may be structured to resemble “one mind in two bodies,” where institutional alignment overrides adversarial oversight. In the context of refugee adjudication, for instance, asylum seekers may appeal administrative rejections through judicial review, suggesting a multilayered decision-making process that enhances institutional resilience and access to redress. This structural overlap appears to offer corrective potential in systems dominated by administrative discretion. However, the institutional dynamics in asylum adjudication do not always produce oppositional outcomes. Judicial bodies may mirror the exclusionary logic of administrative decisions, thereby blurring the boundaries between oversight and alignment.

To investigate how institutional alignment or divergence unfolds between administrative and judicial bodies, this study draws on Hamlin’s (2014) concept of institutional insulation, which highlights the role of administrative independence from political and judicial influence in shaping refugee recognition outcomes. South Korea offers a compelling case for applying this framework: although it is a liberal democracy and a signatory to key international refugee instruments, it maintains one of the lowest recognition rates in the Global North.

Building on this conceptual framework, this study analyzes the decision-making logics of both administrative and judicial bodies in refugee adjudication. It constructs a dataset of 1,062 first-instance refugee rulings issued in South Korea in 2023—representing approximately 36% of all refugee-related court decisions that year. The dataset includes asylum applicants’ claims, the Ministry of Justice’s legal arguments, and the final rulings issued by administrative and district courts. Using text mining techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Word2Vec embeddings, the study identifies patterns in institutional reasoning across three core dimensions: (1) interpretations of persecution grounds, (2) credibility assessments, and (3) standards of proof.

The findings reveal that judicial institutions in South Korea rarely exercise independent adjudicative authority in refugee adjudication. Of the 1,062 rulings, only three (0.28%) diverged from the Ministry of Justice’s decisions—a figure that closely mirrors the 0.2% reversal rate reported in the official judicial statistics yearbook. Rather than offering substantive assessments of "well-founded fear"—a core standard in refugee law—courts often echoed administrative reasoning using vague, boilerplate phrases like “in light of the circumstances.” Both judicial and administrative actors imposed disproportionately high evidentiary burdens on applicants, frequently citing a “lack of sufficient objective evidence.” Moreover, repeat applications were routinely dismissed as abusive, particularly when no new circumstances were presented.

Therefore, contrary to assumptions that judicial involvement necessarily broadens protection (Dauvergne, 2008), the Korean case illustrates how courts can act as institutional amplifiers of exclusion. These findings underscore the importance of inter-institutional dynamics—particularly between administrative and judicial bodies—in sustaining the structural resilience of democratic governance.

Authors

• Ha Lim Lee, Kyung Hee University
  Presenting Author

• Do Han Kim, Kyung Hee University, South Korea
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Dongjae Jung, Korea Institute of Public Administration
  Non-Presenting Co-Author