1831154 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered an application for a protection visa made by a citizen of the Republic of Korea. The applicant sought review of a delegate's decision to refuse the visa. The applicant had arrived in Australia in April 2016 and had since departed and returned on four occasions. She had been convicted of a drug possession offence in Australia in 2016. The applicant's primary concern was that she would face harm in South Korea due to her criminal history and a lack of accommodation.

The legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the applicant was a person to whom Australia owed protection obligations, either as a refugee under section 36(2)(a) of the Migration Act 1958 or by way of complementary protection under section 36(2)(aa). This required the Tribunal to determine if the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, or if there were substantial grounds for believing that she would suffer significant harm as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of removal to South Korea.

The Tribunal found that the applicant was a citizen of South Korea and that the country was her receiving country. It noted that the applicant had voluntarily returned to South Korea on four occasions between 2017 and 2018 and had not experienced harm on any of these occasions. The Tribunal also considered the applicant's criminal conviction in Australia, but concluded that based on the evidence provided, there was not a real chance that she would face serious or significant harm in South Korea for reasons related to this conviction. The Tribunal was not satisfied that the applicant met the criteria for a protection visa.

The Tribunal affirmed the delegate's decision not to grant the applicant a protection visa.