Foreign_Residents_Rise_01.jpg

The banners along Myeongdong’s main shopping street welcome non-Korean tourists from China, Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere. The 2015 national census of population and housing showed that the number of non-Korean residents in the country stood at 1,711,013.

The number of non-Korean residents in Korea has now topped 1.7 million.

According to the 2015 census of population and housing jointly released by the Ministry of the Interior and by Statistics Korea on Nov. 4, the number of foreign residents was 1,711,013, as of Nov. 1 last year.

That figure accounts for about 3.4 percent of the nation’s total population. There has been a threefold increase over the past decade, too, from 1.1 percent of the population in 2006 (536,627 people) when the country started to compile such numbers, to 2.2 percent in 2009 and 3.1 percent in 2014.

More than 60 percent of the non-Korean population lives in urban areas, the data showed. More than 32 percent, or 549,503 people, reside in Gyeonggi-do Province, followed by 23.9 percent (408,083 people) in Seoul, 6.6 percent (112,387) in Gyeongsangnam-do Province, 5.2 percent (89,515) in Incheon and, lastly, 5.2 percent (88,189 non-Koreans) in Chungcheongnam-do Province.

By nationality, mainland Chinese residents are at the top, making up 52.8 percent of the non-Koreans living in Korea (868,611 people). They were followed by Vietnamese (12.6 percent of the non-Korean population, 207,383 people), South Asians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and neighboring countries (5.7 percent, 94,226 people), Thais (4.9 percent, 80,933), Filipinos (4.8 percent, 78,570), people from the U.S. (3.9 percent, 63,444), Central Asians (3.1 percent, 50,954) and Cambodians (3.1 percent, 50,664 people).

As for their reason for residing in Korea, 66.4 percent of them came to Korea for work. Over 25 percent of them came to start a family. This includes 11.6 percent who are children born into a multicultural household, 8.5 percent who are marriage immigrants and 5.4 percent who are naturalized Korean citizens. Other reasons for residing in Korea include studying (4.8 percent) and adoption (3.3 percent).

By Sohn JiAe
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photo: Jeon Han Korea.net Staff Photographer
jiae5853@korea.kr