9 in 10 foreign spouses women

Foreign wives accounted for more than 90 percent of immigrants married to Korean spouses, government data said yesterday.

According to the Korea Immigration Service, there were a total of 126,000 married immigrants without Korean citizenship as of June. Of them, the number of foreign wives was 110,000, more than seven times that of foreign husbands.

"The large portion of foreign wives has resulted mainly from the fact that Korean men who engage in farming or work at factories tend to seek their wives abroad," said an official of the Justice Ministry.



"In the 1980s, many Japanese women got married to Korean men through religious groups such as the Korean Unification Church. After Korea and China formed diplomatic ties in the early 1990s, the Chinese started immigrating through marriage. Since the mid-1990s, their nationalities have become varied to include women from the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and Vietnam," said the official.

Reflecting the changing trend, 68,000 Chinese nationals made up the largest portion (54 percent) of the married immigrants. Of them, 34,000 were of Korean descent.

The second most was Vietnamese with 29,000, followed by Filipinos with 6,200, Japanese with 4,900, Cambodians with 2,800, Mongolians with 2,300 and Americans with 1,500.

Foreign spouses from Britain, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Peru, Belarus and Bolivia were less than one percent in total. The number of stateless people was 55.

The region most populated with married immigrants was Ansan, Gyeonggi Province with 2,797, followed by Yeongdeungpo, Seoul with 2,776 and Guro, Seoul with 2,357l.

While 671 of the married immigrants were living in Gangnam, one of Seoul`s affluent areas, Yongin in Gyeonggi Province and Uleungdo in North Gyeongsang Province had only two and nine foreign spouses, respectively.

After reaching some 25,000 in 2001, the number of married immigrants jumped to surpass the 100,000 mark in 2007. (jylee@heraldm.com)



By Lee Ji-yoon