Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
over the last few years, and it will become even more so as non-Koreans become a greater
part of the social fabric.
Foreign Population in South Korea
The number of non-South Korean nationals in the country passed the 1.4 million landmark
in 2012 and now accounts for almost 3 percent of the population. By far the largest minority
group in the country is Chinese, representing almost half of non-South Koreans, followed
by U.S. nationals, Vietnamese, and Filipinos. Many of the country's Chinese residents
and a sizable number of expatriates from Western countries are of Korean descent. Most
non-South Koreans are concentrated in a few districts of Seoul and surrounding Gyeonggi
Province, but there are also significant numbers in the port of Busan and industrial centers
like Ulsan.
Until relatively recently, most of the Western foreigners in South Korea were soldiers,
missionaries, or English language teachers (and sometimes a combination of all three), but
the country's growing wealth and internationalization has seen a spike in the number of for-
eign executives—increasingly in the employ of local firms—as well as independent foreign
entrepreneurs, consultants, and restaurateurs.
A couple of local social issues have also helped spur a rapid expansion in the foreign
population, legal and illegal, since the late 1990s. First, with domestic labor getting in-
creasingly more expensive and fewer educated South Koreans willing to buckle down and
do the backbreaking factory work that the nation's export success was originally built on,
more and more local manufacturers are forced to look for their employees abroad, partic-
ularly elsewhere in Asia. Second, the country's widening gender disparity—men outnum-
ber women by a significant percentage—and the reluctance of many South Korean women
to marry into rural families has created a thriving business in the import of foreign brides,
especially from China and Vietnam, whose people share many physical and cultural traits
with the locals.
The ballooning number of foreign residents has forced the country to grapple with iden-
tity questions in a way that was unthinkable just a generation ago; it used to be that be-
ing South Korean meant having Korean blood, but now a lot of people aren't so sure. For
the most part, South Koreans seem to be dealing with the changes in their country with
characteristic speed and vigor. The national and local governments have steadily rolled out
initiatives to make everyday life easier for non-Koreans, including on-demand translation
services and one-stop offices that can help confused foreigners with everything from filling
out tax returns to signing mobile-phone contracts. Crisis centers have been established to
help foreign laborers facing legal or other issues, and many cities now run free classes to
