The National Statistical Office released its marriage statistics, and among the many interesting things that turned up, it appears that there was a large increase in “international marriages”:
The NSO announced Wednesday that 25,658 Koreans married foreigners, which is a 61.2 percent rise from 9,745 couples in 2002. About 8.4 percent of all married couples last year were international marriages.
NSO said that especially large numbers of Korean men are marrying Chinese women.
Korean-Chinese marriages totaled 13,373 couples last year alone, which is twice as much as the 7,041 couples from 2002. Lee Chun-seok, head of the Vital Statistics Division of NSO, said that since last July when the census registration for international marriages was simplified, the number of international marriages increased.
Taking the 19,214 international marriages into account where the wife was a foreigner, seven out of 10 Korean men have Chinese wives.
The Korean-language Yonhap report goes into further detail — besides the Chinese, Vietnamese women were the next favored choice with 1,403 couples last year, Japanese with 1,242, Filipinas with 944, Thais with 346, Uzbeks with 392, Mongolians with 318 and Russians with 297. It should be pointed out that of the Chinese-Korean marriages included in the statistics, they include marriages to ethnic Koreans from China (Korean: Joseon-jok).
On the other hand, many Korean women chose to marry Japanese men. Exactly 2,613 Korean women married a Japanese, which is four out of 10 Korean women who married a foreigner.
Marrying Japanese women came in second with 1,242 couples, and 1,237 Korean women married Americans.
After American men, Chinese men came in third with 1,199, followed by Canadians with 223, Bengalis with 158, Pakistanis with 130, Australians with 108, Germans with 93, Britons with 88 and French with 78.
No word on Mongolian-American marriages in Korea, but I can’t image there were that many.
The official statistics — warm and fresh straight from the NSO’s ovens — can be found here (PDF file).
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3 Comments
I’m surprised they didn’t make a separate catagory for returnees.
Korea saw a 60%+ rise in 1 year?! That’s pretty big. Japan has about 5%(!) of folks marrying foreigners. It seems a touch high to me, but I can see that.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cg.....0208a3.htm
I’d bet the stats are really skewed by gyopos. No matter what their passports say … we all know that the hyper race conscious natives of the Korean penninsula don’t view ethnic Korean citizens of other countries as foreigners.