The Korean Institute of Criminology on Tuesday published a study of 251 criminal cases in 2004, which found that 15.5 percent of foreigners caught for prostitution, credit card fraud, small arms smuggling and other crimes in Korea had come to the country for no other purpose.

However, immigration offenses accounted for more than half or 54.2 percent of the crimes committed by foreigners here. Of those, 25.9 percent was naturalization fraud, 13.5 percent illegal entry into the country, 12.7 percent overstaying of visas and 12.4 percent illegal residency.

The number of foreign criminals in Korea increased more than five-fold since 1988, from 2,532 to 13,045 in 2004, while the overall number of foreigners only grew 2.6 times, from 2.17 million in 1998 to 5.75 million in 2004, meaning the number of criminals among them rose twice as fast.

The biggest group of convicted lawbreakers came from Iran, who made up 6,691 of every 100,000 foreign criminals, followed by 6,304 Russians, 5,672 Hong Kong citizens, 4,958 Americans and 3,190 Germans. Statistically the most law-abiding guests were the Nepalese, who made up only 211 convicted criminals per 100,000 wrongdoers from abroad, followed by 571 Indonesians, 807 Filipinos and 821 Thais.

(englishnews@chosun.com )