By Do Je-hae
Staff Reporter
Men from advanced nations and women from developing countries mainly accounted for Korea's increasing number of multi-cultural couples, according to the Supreme Court Sunday. This is the first time a family relations roster of multi-racial families has been made public.
The survey showed that 143,107 men and 134,831 women of foreign origin from 10 nations are part of multi-cultural families with proper family registration.
Looking into the nationality of foreign males, American nationals topped the list with 73,512, followed by Japanese (39,900), Chinese (17,494), Canadians (3,369), Germans (2,894), English (1,596), Australian (1,532), French (1,143), Pakistanis (836) and Taiwanese (832).
Husbands from advanced countries such as the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, England and France accounted for 86.6 percent (123,946) of the total foreign-born male heads of families.
In contrast, the survey found more than 85 percent, or 115,934, of the foreign-born wives were from developing countries such as China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia.
Currently, 70,878 Chinese women, or 52.5 percent, topped the list of foreign-born wives of Korean husbands, followed by Vietnamese (30,621), Japanese (12,355), Filipinas (6,355), Americans (3,572), Cambodians (2,913), Thais (2,762), Mongolians (2,405), Uzbekistanis (1,555) and Russians (1,415).
A total of 292,184 foreigners from 173 countries were found in the family registry system. "The statistics confirm that we are increasingly becoming a multi-cultural society. We hope that the survey will play a role in improving public awareness of the demographic transition," an official with the Supreme Court said.
The statistics also showed that Americans were most forthcoming when adopting Korean children. A total of 890 families from the United States adopted Korean babies, followed by those from Japan (408), England (8), Germany (8) and Belgium (7).
The family relations roster under the control of the Supreme Court documents information on births, marriages, divorces, deaths and adoptions.