household head) or hojuje (호주제; 戶主制) is a family register system formerly employed in Korea.
[2] The limited information on North Korean family registration law indicates that North Korea likely abolished this system in 1955 under the Regulation on Citizen Identity Registration (Korean: 공민의 신분등록에 관한 규정) adopted in that year.
[3] By the 21st century, North Korean reference works used the terms hojeok and hoju only in a historical sense, and North Korean refugees reported that although births and changes in family relations were required to be reported to the government there was no comparable public registry.
Conservative groups led by the National Action Campaign opposed abolishing the system, in part on the grounds that doing so would follow North Korea's example.
[6] The hoju system was replaced by the modern Family Relations Register through a reform of the Civil Code of South Korea in 2008.