SEOUL, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- One out of five foreigners in South Korea experienced discrimination while staying here, a government data showed Wednesday.
According to Statistics Korea, the number of foreigners aged 15 or above, who stayed here for at least 91 days, was 1,301,000 as of May 15, up 6.2 percent, or 76,000, from a year earlier.
Among the total foreign nationals, 40 percent was ethnic Koreans from China, followed by the Chinese with a share of 11.5 percent and the Vietnamese with 10.9 percent.
Foreigners here, who said they were discriminated against by South Koreans at least once for the past year, reached 21.2 percent of the total.
Among those who suffered discrimination, 60.9 percent cited their nationalities as the reason for the discrimination.
The lack of Korean language proficiency was cited by 25.7 percent, while their appearance and occupation were picked by 6.6 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.
The number of paid workers of foreign nationality was 846,000 as of May 15. Among them, temporary employees or daily workers reached 350,000.
It was higher than 23.8 percent, the portion of South Korean workers who were employed temporarily or on a daily basis.
