The number of foreign residents in South Korea more than tripled over the past 10 years due mainly to an increase in migrant workers, government data showed Sunday.
The number of foreigners living in South Korea reached 1.74 million as of Jan. 1, accounting for 3.4 percent of total residents registered with authorities, according to the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs.
There are three kinds of foreign residents in South Korea — those who live in South Korea for more than 90 days but do not have Korean nationality, those who are Korean citizens and those who are the underage children of such foreign parents or married foreign immigrants.
The data compared with 540,000 foreign residents recorded in 2006 when the country began to compile related data.
By nationality, Chinese people topped the list at 54.7 percent, followed by Vietnamese people at 11.5 percent and Americans at 4.2 percent, the data showed. Among the Chinese residents, ethnic Koreans from China accounted for about 40 percent.
About 35 percent of the foreign residents live in Gyeonggi Province surrounding the nation’s capital, followed by Seoul with 26.3 percent and South Gyeongsang Province with 6.2 percent.
Some 83,000 foreign migrant workers, mostly from China and Southeast Asian countries, reside in the city of Ansan, some 42 kilometers south of Seoul, where clusters of factories are located, according to the data. (Yonhap)
