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9 out of 10 foreign nationals say they want to continue living in Korea
By Yi Whan-woo
More than one out of five naturalized Koreans have experienced discrimination here due to where they originally came from, their lack of proficiency in the Korean language, how they look, for not being rich and other reasons, according to a report, Tuesday.
Released by Statistics Korea, the report comes amid an increase in the number of naturalized citizens as well as their higher rate of participation in economic activities.
The report said that slightly less than one out of every five foreign nationals had experienced discrimination for the same reasons the naturalized Koreans did.
The report was aimed at finding quality of life in relation to employment, health, welfare, communication, downtime and other relevant factors among immigrants.
The report was based on a survey of 5,000 naturalized citizens and 20,000 foreign nationals. The survey was conducted from May 24 to July 7 this year.
A total of 20.5 percent of the 5,000 naturalized Korean citizens responded that they were discriminated against during the previous year from the time of the survey.
One's country of origin accounted for 63.6 percent of the reasons they were discriminated against, while one's lack of Korean language skills accounted for 28 percent, one's appearance for 4.7 percent, one's economic status for 1.9 percent, one's occupation for 0.9 percent and others for 0.9 percent.
The finding was comparable to 19.7 percent of the 20,000 foreign nationals who responded that they faced discrimination during the cited period.
The country of origin accounted for 58 percent of the reasons they were discriminated against. One's Korean language skills accounted for 27.9 percent of the discrimination cases, appearance for 8.3 percent, economic status for 1.4 percent, occupation for 1.8 percent and other reasons for 2.7 percent.
Meanwhile, the report showed the number of naturalized Koreans aged 15 or older who acquired citizenship here between 2017 and May 2022 totaled 52,000, up 5.7 percent from 2021.
Some 40.8 percent of the 52,000 were originally from Vietnam, and another 33 percent were ethnic Koreans from China.
Of the 52,000, 36,000 are considered economically active, meaning that they are either engaged in work or willing to work. The number is up 6.9 percent from last year.
The employment rate among naturalized Korans correspondingly amounted to 65.3 percent, a 1.7-percentage point increase from 2021.
Regarding foreign nationals living in Korea, their numbers declined by 2.2 percent to 1.3 million between 2021 and 2022.
During the cited period, the number of those who have jobs also decreased by 12,000 year-on-year to 843,000.
The employment rate among foreign nationals, however, saw a slight increase of 0.6 percentage points to 64.8 percent.
Some 51.1 percent of the foreign workers said they receive a monthly wage between 2 million won and 3 million won ($2,300).
Another 30.1 percent got paid 3 million or more per month, while another 15 percent received wages between 1 million and 2 million won and the remaining 3.8 percent with less than 1 million won. More than half of the foreigners said they are satisfied with their income and nine out of 10 said they want to continue staying in Korea.
