The Supreme Court in South Korea has backed a Liberian girl's request for refugee status, acknowledging her fear that she would be forced to have a circumcision in her home country.

The court on Sunday overturned a lower court ruling dismissing the immigration status of the girl, 15, and sent the case back to the Seoul High Court for retrial.

The girl, born in a refugee camp in Ghana, came to South Korea with her mother in March 2012 and petitioned for refugee status. The Korea Immigration Service rejected the petition on the grounds there did not seem to be any risk of her being persecuted in Liberia. The girl filed a suit against the immigration service, saying she would be forced to have a circumcision if she went back.

Before her file reached the Supreme Court, lower courts kept denying her refugee status, saying that circumcision in Liberia was "a matter of private crime" and that the Liberian government should be capable of providing protection.

But the Supreme Court overturned the rulings, defining circumcision as a form of persecution. The court said the girl feared "an act of culture, tradition and religion that entails extreme pain to a female body" that violated human dignity.

"The lower courts didn't check before deciding on rulings how often female circumcision has been forcibly conducted in Liberia and whether there were any local efforts in the African country to curb the act in question," the Supreme Court said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3852061&forum_id=2#35101134)