diff --git a/kustomize/go.mod b/kustomize/go.mod
index 39328093c..32113e082 100644
--- a/kustomize/go.mod
+++ b/kustomize/go.mod
@@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ exclude (
 	github.com/russross/blackfriday v2.0.0+incompatible
 	sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api v0.2.0
 )
+
+replace (
+	sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api => ../api
+	sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml => ../kyaml
+)
diff --git a/kyaml/yaml/types.go b/kyaml/yaml/types.go
index 862a0ecc8..46112eeda 100644
--- a/kyaml/yaml/types.go
+++ b/kyaml/yaml/types.go
@@ -35,18 +35,18 @@ func IsMissingOrNull(node *RNode) bool {
 }
 
 // IsEmpty returns true if the RNode is MissingOrNull, or is either a MappingNode with
-// no fields, or a SequenceNode with no elements.
+// no fields.
 func IsEmpty(node *RNode) bool {
-	if node == nil || node.YNode() == nil || node.YNode().Tag == NullNodeTag {
+	if IsMissingOrNull(node) {
 		return true
 	}
 
+	// Empty sequence is a special case and temporarily not considered as empty here.
+	// Some users may want to keep empty sequence for compatibility reason.
+	// For example, use JSON 6902 patch.
 	if node.YNode().Kind == yaml.MappingNode && len(node.YNode().Content) == 0 {
 		return true
 	}
-	if node.YNode().Kind == yaml.SequenceNode && len(node.YNode().Content) == 0 {
-		return true
-	}
 
 	return false
 }