SEOUL, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Foreigners residing in South Korea rose last year on the continued expansion of foreign students and workers, a government data showed Tuesday.
The number of foreign residents staying here reached 2,367,607 as of end-2018, up 8.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The ratio of foreigners to the country's 50 million population increased to 4.57 percent at the end of last year from 3.50 percent four years earlier.
The higher foreigner ratio came on the continued growth of foreign students and migrant workers. The number of foreign students jumped 18.9 percent over the year to 160,671 as of end-2018.
Chinese nationals, including ethnic Koreans, ranked first with the number of 1,070,566 residents, or 45.2 percent of the total foreigners residing here.
It was followed by Thais with 197,764, Vietnamese with 196,633, Americans with 151,018, Uzbeks with 68,433 and Japanese with 60,878.
The percentage of foreigners illegally staying here increased to 15 percent of the total foreign residents as of end-2018 from 11.5 percent a year earlier.
