The NSO announced Wednesday that 25,658 Koreans married foreigners, which is a 61.2 percent rise from 9,745 couples in 2002. About 8.4 percent of all married couples last year were international marriages.

NSO said that especially large numbers of Korean men are marrying Chinese women.

Korean-Chinese marriages totaled 13,373 couples last year alone, which is twice as much as the 7,041 couples from 2002. Lee Chun-seok, head of the Vital Statistics Division of NSO, said that since last July when the census registration for international marriages was simplified, the number of international marriages increased.

Taking the 19,214 international marriages into account where the wife was a foreigner, seven out of 10 Korean men have Chinese wives.

On the other hand, many Korean women chose to marry Japanese men. Exactly 2,613 Korean women married a Japanese, which is four out of 10 Korean women who married a foreigner.

Marrying Japanese women came in second with 1,242 couples, and 1,237 Korean women married Americans.

A total of 304,900 couples got married last year, which is 1,700 couples less than from 2002. However, 458 couples divorced every day to total 167,100 couples last year, which is 15 percent more than from 2002.

(Park Jong-se, jspark@chosun.com )