내면화된 국경과 미등록 아동 - 한국 언론 담론의 구조와 변화 분석 -

초록

Undocumented children in South Korea remain in a condition of legal non-existence due to sequential failures in birth, residence, and nationality registration. Because they lack the capacity for self-representation, media discourse constitutes the primary avenue through which society becomes aware of their presence. This study conducts a structural analysis of media discourse on undocumented children, who are unrecognized within Korea’s legal and administrative systems, using Structural Topic Modeling (STM) on 4,038 news articles published between 2001 and 2025. Five optimal topics were identified, among which “Birth Registration System and Unregistered Infants” (Topic 3) showed the highest semantic coherence and exclusivity, accounting for nearly 30% of the corpus. This indicates that media discourse predominantly frames undocumented children through the lens of missing birth registration. In contrast, topics related to early childhood care and education appeared fragmented and marginal, reflecting limited media attention to later life-course inequalities. Longitudinal analysis revealed that discourse shifted markedly after 2022–2023, when the birth notification system was introduced, with Topic 3 rising and the control-oriented frame of parental legal status (Topic 1) declining. However, issues surrounding data governance, the integration of birth information with immigration control, and risks of administrative surveillance remained largely unaddressed. The study argues for a strict separation between birth registration and immigration control and calls for broader discourse that acknowledges undocumented children’s rights beyond the point of birth.

키워드