[Civil Documents] Power of Attorney for Civil Document Submission: How Far Can You Delegate? — Seal Registration Must Be Done in Person

3-Line Summary

• Civil petitions are divided into three categories: tasks anyone can do, tasks that can be delegated via a power of attorney, and tasks that only the individual can do. An agent can obtain a fixed date (confirmed date) as long as they have the original lease agreement, and the issuance of a resident registration certificate or seal certificate can be delegated via a power of attorney. However, for a moving-in report, only the spouse or direct blood relatives of the head of the household can be authorized; therefore, siblings or administrative agents cannot report on their behalf.
• The initial registration of a seal and the issuance of a Certificate of Personal Signature Verification must be done by the individual in person. If there are schedules for traveling abroad or hospitalization, these two matters should be handled first.
• A single power of attorney is not enough. Since the delegator must personally fill out the prescribed power of attorney form for a seal certificate, separate powers of attorney must be prepared for each institution and document.

Table of Contents

1. The To-Do List the Client Sent 9 Days Before Departure
2. Document Submission Agency: Tasks Divided into Three Categories
3. Seal Registration and Certificate of Personal Signature Verification: Only for the Individual
4. Separate Powers of Attorney for Seal Certificates, and Separate Timing for Issuance
5. Why I Processed the Moving-in Report and Fixed Date on the Same Day as the Move-in Date
6. Six Days Before the Company Deadline: The Day All Documents Were Ready
7. Scope of Work at the Administrative Agent Office
8. Checklist Before Delegating Document Submission

1. The To-Do List the Client Sent 9 Days Before Departure

I am an administrative agent (administrative scrivener) working in Songdo, Incheon. I would like to introduce an episode I encountered while working.

Sometimes, the document that seems simplest is the first one to hit a snag. In this case, it was “a single power of attorney.”

The email had an attached photo of a screenshot from a mobile phone memo. There were checkboxes next to each line, and not a single one had been checked yet. Moving-in report, fixed date, resident registration certificate, seal certificate, submission to company. At the bottom of the memo, it read, “If I write one power of attorney for my younger brother, everything will be fine, right?”

The sender was a female engineer in her late 20s working at a semiconductor equipment company in Songdo. She was scheduled to go on a five-week business trip to a client in Taiwan in nine days to install equipment. The problem was that the move-in date for her newly contracted rental house fell right in the middle of her business trip.

The original plan was to finish moving before her departure. However, the previous tenant on the landlord’s side pushed the moving date back by three weeks, which also delayed the balance payment date and the move-in date. She intended to secure part of the deposit through a company employee housing loan, but the company required her to submit a resident registration certificate showing the new address, a seal certificate, and a copy of the lease agreement with the fixed date by early November as part of the loan agreement documents.

She decided to have her younger brother, who is in graduate school, handle the moving boxes and the keys. She thought that if she wrote one power of attorney for her brother and asked him to handle the rest, it would be sufficient.

2. Document Submission Agency: Tasks Divided into Three Categories

On the first day of the consultation, I re-categorized the five lines from the memo one by one. The criterion was “Who can do it.”

Tasks anyone can do

• Fixed Date (Confirmed Date): An agent can obtain this at a community center by presenting the original lease agreement. A power of attorney is not required.

Tasks that can be delegated via a power of attorney

• Moving-in Report: The head of the household must report it, but the people who can report on their behalf with the head of the household’s authorization are limited to the spouse of the head of the household, direct blood relatives of the head of the household, direct blood relatives of the spouse, and the spouses of the direct blood relatives (Article 11, Paragraph 1 of the Resident Registration Act). Siblings or administrative agents do not fall into this category. If she is living alone in the new house, she is the head of the household and can report directly online via Government24.
• Issuance of Resident Registration Certificate: A person authorized by the individual can obtain this by presenting a power of attorney, a copy of the delegator’s ID, and the agent’s ID.
• Issuance of Seal Certificate: Proxy issuance is possible. However, the conditions explained below apply.

Tasks that only the individual can do

• Seal Registration (Initial Registration): The individual must go to the community center in person (Article 7 of the Seal Registration Act). There is an exception where one can report in writing with the guarantee of one adult who has already registered a seal if they cannot visit due to illness, childbirth, studying abroad, or living overseas, but supporting documents for the reason are required.
• Issuance of Certificate of Personal Signature Verification: Proxy issuance is not permitted.

After dividing them this way, I realized one line was missing from the memo. It was the seal registration. The client had never registered a seal before. Since a seal certificate can only be issued if a seal is already registered, she was in a state where her brother could not obtain it no matter how many powers of attorney he brought.

3. Only the Individual Can Report a Seal or Obtain a Certificate of Personal Signature

Upon realizing they did not have a registered seal, the client immediately asked for an alternative. They mentioned having seen a post online stating that a Certificate of Personal Signature has the same legal effect as a Seal Certificate. Their question was whether their younger brother could simply obtain that for them.

The Certificate of Personal Signature is convenient because it can be issued using only an ID card without needing a registered seal. However, pursuant to Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the Act on Verification of Personal Signature, etc., the individual must appear in person to sign, and proxy issuance is not permitted. This was not a method that could be used while on a business trip.

We also verified the documents required by the company. Upon inquiring with the company’s HR team, we were informed that they require both a Seal Certificate and a Certificate of Personal Signature as part of the contractual documents. In either case, the client had to visit a Community Center (Jumin Center) in person before departing the country.

The choice was to register a seal. If the client obtained a Certificate of Personal Signature before leaving, the issuance date would be too early, and the younger brother would not be able to re-obtain it on their behalf. On the other hand, if a seal is registered, the younger brother can obtain Seal Certificates later via a power of attorney. We chose the option that allowed for flexibility even if the business trip schedule changed, as the trip was expected to last five weeks.

The client went to a Community Center near their office during their lunch break the following day to register their seal. They said it only required an ID card and a seal, and it took less than 10 minutes. They did not issue the Seal Certificate on the spot. The reason lay in the next step.

4. Separate Power of Attorney for Seal Certificates, and Separate Timing for Issuance

The “single power of attorney” the client initially had in mind would not work here.

To have a Seal Certificate issued by a proxy, one cannot use a general power of attorney; instead, a specific form called a Power of Attorney for Issuance of Seal Certificate must be used, and the delegator must complete this power of attorney personally. The method of signing or sealing (whether the registered seal must be used) should be confirmed with the issuing authority in advance. The proxy must present their own ID along with the delegator’s Resident Registration Card (pursuant to Article 13, Paragraph 1 of the Enforcement Decree of the Seal Act). Therefore, the client left their Resident Registration Card with their younger brother before departing. This is a different document from the power of attorney used for reporting a change of address or issuing a Resident Registration Certificate.

Consequently, we prepared separate powers of attorney for each institution and document:

1. Power of Attorney for Issuance of Seal Certificate: Proxy: younger brother; Delegator: completed personally by the client.
2. Report of Change of Address (Moving-in Report): The client would report this directly via Gov24 from their business trip location instead of using a power of attorney (the younger brother and the office are not authorized persons for this).
3. Power of Attorney for Issuance of Resident Registration Certificate: Proxy: younger brother.

The timing of the Seal Certificate issuance also had to be determined. While it might seem convenient to obtain the Seal Certificate before leaving, that certificate would show the old address. Since the Resident Registration Certificate required by the company would show the new address, the addresses on the two documents would differ. The company’s HR team specifically requested, “Please submit documents with matching addresses.”

Thus, we established a sequence: first, the change of address report would be processed on the moving-in date, and the following day, the younger brother would obtain both the Seal Certificate and the Resident Registration Certificate together. The documents must be issued after the change of address report is processed so that both documents reflect the new address.

5. The Reason for Processing the Moving-in Report and Fixed Date on the Same Day

Pursuant to Article 16, Paragraph 1 of the Resident Registration Act, a change of address must be reported within 14 days from the date of moving to the new address. This deadline remains the same even if one is on a business trip.

However, in a rental (Jeonse) situation, there is a criterion more important than the 14-day rule. Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Housing Lease Protection Act stipulates that once a lessee takes possession of the housing and completes their resident registration, they can assert their rights against third parties starting from the following day. Additionally, one must obtain a “Fixed Date” (Hwakjeong-ilja) to claim priority for the return of the deposit. If the moving-in report and the Fixed Date are delayed even by a single day, the tenant’s rights may fall behind other rights that arise in the interim.

Therefore, we decided to handle both tasks at once on the morning of the moving-in date.

• Moving-in Report: The client would report online via Gov24 from Taiwan (on the morning of the moving-in date, the office would contact the center to coordinate the timing).
• Fixed Date: The office would apply at the Community Center of the new address using the original lease agreement.

It was decided that the younger brother would receive the original lease agreement from the landlord immediately after the balance was paid and deliver it to the office. The client transferred the balance directly via internet banking from their business trip location, and once the landlord confirmed the transfer, the younger brother received the keys and the original lease agreement.

There was one small incident on the morning of the moving-in date. The younger brother brought a graduate school student ID as his identification for the proxy. Even with a photo, a student ID is not accepted as a valid ID at a Community Center. The younger brother had to go back home to get his Resident Registration Card before the moving truck arrived. Fortunately, the younger brother’s task for that day was only to deliver the keys and the contract, and since the office was handling the counter work, it did not affect the schedule.

At 10:30 AM, we confirmed the client’s online moving-in report and obtained the Fixed Date. We took a photo of the lease agreement with the Fixed Date stamp and sent it to the client in Taiwan. The reply was a single thumbs-up emoji.

6. Six Days Before the Company’s Deadline, the Day All Documents Were Ready

The following day, my younger brother went to the Community Center. He brought a Power of Attorney for issuing a Seal Certificate, a Power of Attorney for issuing a Certified Copy of Resident Registration, the client’s resident registration card that had been kept in custody, and his own resident registration card. This time, it was not a student ID.

Both the Seal Certificate and the Certified Copy of Resident Registration were issued with the new address. As requested by the company, the Seal Certificate was issued for “general use” in the purpose section. The documents required by the company were gathered as follows:

• Certified Copy of Resident Registration (new address)
• Seal Certificate (new address, for general use)
• Copy of the Lease Agreement with a Fixed Date (Hwakjeong-ilja)

Since the company’s loan agreement itself is a document that the client must sign, we inquired with the company and processed it via electronic signature. My brother personally delivered the document envelope to the company’s HR team. It was six days before the deadline set by the company.

In this case, the starting point of the schedule was the seal registration performed during lunch hour before departure. If those 10 minutes had not been used on that day, the Seal Certificate could not have been issued, no matter how well the remaining schedule was organized.

7. Scope of Work at the Administrative Agent Office

Pursuant to Article 2 of the Administrative Agent Act, an administrative agent (administrative scrivener) performs the duties of preparing and submitting documents to administrative agencies. When a situation arises where an individual cannot visit the service counter in person, the beginning of this work is distinguishing between what can be delegated and what the individual must do themselves.

Hwang Yunsang (黄允相) Administrative Agent Office performs the following tasks regarding the proxy submission of documents:

• Creating a schedule by dividing the to-do list by delegatability and deadline order
• Preparing powers of attorney for each institution and document, and providing guidance on necessary copies of ID and attached documents
• Proxy submission of applications at Community Centers, such as applying for a Fixed Date, and providing guidance on procedures that can be handled by a designated person, such as moving-in reporting (Jeonip-singo)
• Preparation of various reports and applications and proxy submission to administrative agencies
• Managing document schedules for periods when the individual finds it difficult to move, such as business trips, hospitalization, or staying overseas

Since the documents required by institutions and the scope of delegation vary by case, individual verification is required.

8. Checklist Before Delegating Document Submission via Power of Attorney

The client returned to the country five weeks later. In the new house they moved into, the curtains my brother had hung were up, but they were reportedly one span too short to reach the floor. Not a single document was missing.

If you have a scheduled period during which you cannot visit a service counter, please check the following first:

1. Start with things only you can do: Seal registration and the issuance of a Certificate of Personal Signature are not delegable. These must be handled before departure or hospitalization.
2. Whether a seal is registered: If you need a Seal Certificate but have never registered a seal, even proxy issuance is not possible.
3. Separate powers of attorney for each document: For a Seal Certificate, the delegator must personally fill out the prescribed power of attorney form. This must be prepared separately from the power of attorney for the Resident Registration copy, and the delegator’s resident registration card must also be entrusted to the proxy. Since moving-in reporting can only be delegated to a spouse or direct blood relative, consider online reporting by yourself as well.
4. Issuance order and address: Certificates obtained before moving-in reporting will show the old address. If the submitting entity requires address consistency, obtain them after the moving-in report is processed.
5. Moving-in reporting and Fixed Date on the move-in date: While the deadline for moving-in reporting is 14 days, to protect your Jeonse deposit, it is safest to process both the moving-in report and the Fixed Date together on the day you move in.

If you are in Incheon or Songdo and need proxy submission of civil service documents due to business trips or moving schedules, please try dividing your to-do list before writing a power of attorney.

If you are curious about a similar situation, please feel free to leave an inquiry.