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By Park Si-soo
As of August, 335,433 foreigners were overstaying their visas in South Korea and 36 percent of them were Thai, according to justice ministry data on Sunday.
The illegal foreigners accounted for 14.5 percent of the foreign population of 2.3 million.
Rep. Song Gi-hun of the ruling Democratic Party revealed the data, which he received from the ministry for the ongoing parliamentary audit of government bodies.
The data showed 188,206 Thais were living here and nearly 65 percent of them (about 120,000) were undocumented or overstaying their visas. The ministry has deported nearly 20,000 undocumented Thais since 2016.
Nearly one-third of people from Kazakhstan (11,746 in 30,525) and from Mongolia (15,478 in 44,272) were illegal residents. Nearly half the foreign population was Chinese (1.059 million) but only 6.7 percent had illegal status.
Nearly 53 percent of illegal residents entered the country by taking advantage of visa exemption programs.
"Many foreigners entered the country using a visa exemption program and illegally settled to make money," Rep. Song said. "This reflects that the (exemption) program is flawed. The government needs to find and fix the situation."
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