It quoted data from the National Statistical Office showing that 2,613 Japanese men married Korean women, followed by Americans (1,237), Chinese (1,199), Canadians (223), Bangladeshis (158), Pakistanis (130), Australians (108) and Germans (93). An increase in the number of South Asian workers in Korea is reflected in the fact that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis take fifth and sixth place.

The ministry said that of 160,000 Korean people who married foreigners since 1990, 50,000 were women, and they married 26,162 Japanese husbands, 13,174 Americans and 1,471 Chinese.

Half of the women who married foreigners had been married before. In 2003, 3,637 Korean women were married to foreign husbands in their first marriage, while 2,674 Korean women took foreign men as their second husbands. But of 1,199 Korean women who married Chinese men, 811 had been married before, whereas some 76.3 percent of Korean women who wed Americans had never been married before.

Women from big cities like Seoul (1920), Gyeonggi Province (1204) and Busan (440) were more likely to marry foreign men than women in less developed areas.

Korean men, for their part, married 13,373 Chinese, 1,403 Vietnamese, 1,242 Japanese and 944 Filipino women, with Western women barely getting a look in.

(Kim Dong-seop, dskim@chosun.com )