International marriages accounted for 9.2 percent of total marriages of 258,000 in the RoK in 2018, up 0.9 percent against the previous year, according to Statistics Korea.

Out of the total, couples made up of a Korean man and a foreign woman accounted for 67 percent last year, followed by foreign male-Korean female pairs with 19.6 percent and couples from naturalised Koreans with 14.6 percent.

Vietnamese brides took the lion’s share of all international marriages at 30 percent in 2018. Chinese wives came in second with 21.6 percent, followed by Thai at 6.6 percent.

In comparison, Chinese men accounted for 9.4 percent of foreign males who got married with Korean women, followed by Americans at 6.2 percent and Vietnamese at 2.5 percent./. VNA