Proportion of babies born to multicultural families hits record high

The proportion of babies born to multicultural families in Korea hit record high last year.

According to the data released by Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the number of babies born to multicultural families were 18,079 last year, 5.5% of the 326,822 babies born that year. The proportion of babies born to multicultural families, which is the highest since data began to be collected in 2008, rose by 0.3 percentage point from 2017.

The highest percentage of babies (35.6%) was born to Vietnamese mother, followed by Chinese (20.8%), and the Philippines (6.9%). The total number of multicultural marriages last year increased to 23,773, up 8.5% (1,856) from a year earlier. The proportion of multicultural marriage stood at 9.2%, the highest since 2011 (9.3%), as the country saw the number of marriages drop.


Hye-Ryung Choi herstory@donga.com