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The number of foreigners residing in Korea was 891,341 as of May this year, up 168,655, or 23.3 percent, from 722,686 last year. The main reason is introduction of a working visit visa system early last year, which facilitates employment of ethnic Koreans from China in Korea. Korea has seen a sharp increase of Korean Chinese residents since then. The Ministry of Public Administration and Security released the statistics on Tuesday after research on the foreigner population with local governments in May. Those staying in Korea for more than 90 days, and those who obtained Korean citizenship and their children were included in the survey, but not illegal immigrants.
The number of Korean Chinese here has been rising by some 100,000 every year since the ministry started the survey in 2006. While there were 169,995 Korean Chinese living in Korea out of 536,627 foreigners in 2006, the number rose to 378,345 in 2008. The working visit system, which was devised in January 2007 and implemented in March last year, allows ethnic Koreans living overseas to work in Korea for two years without work permit. A large number of Korean Chinese came to Korea to take advantage of this.
The entire foreign population in Korea makes up 1.8 percent of the total registered population in Korea of 49.35 million. Nearly half of the foreigners, or 437,727, were migrant workers, and 144,385 or 16.2 percent came to marry Koreans. The number of children born to couples from international marriages was 58,007 or 6.5 percent. By nationality, Chinese were on the top with 57.9 percent, followed by Southeast Asians and South Asians with 22.2 and 3.7 percent respectively. Americans, Japanese, and Mongolians followed with 3, 2.7, and 2.4 percent.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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