(1) In case a party or a case in dispute is substantively related to the Republic of Korea, a court shall have the international jurisdiction. In this case, the court shall obey reasonable principles, compatible to the ideology of the allocation of international jurisdiction, in judging the existence of the substantive relations.
(2) A court shall judge whether or not it has the international jurisdiction in the light of jurisdictional provisions of domestic laws and shall take a full consideration of the unique nature of international jurisdiction in the light of the purport of the provision of paragraph (1).
According to the Article mentioned above, as for international jurisdiction, the main issue is whether the case or the party is “substantively related to the Republic of Korea”. The Article applied to a divorce case, if you’re not a Korean but your spouse, and you continued your marriage in Korea, a family court in Korea shall have international jurisdiction on your divorce case. However, what about non-Korean couples? If they have married in Korea, a family court in Korea shall have international jurisdiction on their divorce case. Actually, one of my former clients does not have Korean nationalities and neither does her husband. But a family court in Korea had international jurisdiction over her divorce case since their marriage had been continued in Korea.
If you find out that a family court has international jurisdiction to your divorce case, you will have to check what law shall be applied to your case. Even if a family court in Korea has jurisdiction over the case, foreign laws might be the governing law based on the parties’ nationality and their marriage situation. As for divorce, the Article on General Validity of Marriage of the Act shall apply as below;