Elementary school students on Oct. 17, 2023, pose for a photo at the entrance ceremony for Gyeonggi Korean-language Sharing School in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do Province, the province's first institution for intensive education in Korean for children of multicultural families. (Gyeonggi-do Office of Education)

By Koh Hyunjeong

Multicultural families last year saw their number of births rise for the first time in 12 years with over 13,000.

A report on 2024 statistics on multicultural population dynamics released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics on Nov. 6 said the number of births to such families last year reached 13,416, up 10.4% from 2023 and the first rise since 2012.

Thus such births accounted for 5.6% of the country's total of 238,317, up from 5.3% to mark the second consecutive year of growth.

The increase in the number of children born to multicultural families was attributed to a rise in international marriages, which had slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the number of such unions rose 5% year on year to 21,450, the third straight year of growth since 17,428 in 2022.

The most common nuptials of this type last year was between a Korean husband and a foreign wife, accounting for 71.2%. The nationalities of such wives were led by Vietnamese (30%), Chinese (12.2%) and Thai (5.4%) and men from the U.S. comprised the largest proportion of foreign husbands (7%), followed by those from China (6%) and Vietnam (3.6%).

hjkoh@korea.kr