By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

The number of expatriates staying here has rocketed over the past several years, but the country still ranks rock bottom in openness to the outside world, according to a private think tank.

The Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) claimed Sunday that the nation needs to come up with proactive and preemptive measures to prepare itself for the more globalized era.

"Since 2000, the number of foreigners here has more than doubled to break through the 1-million mark. Overseas students make their presence felt and migrant workers play a crucial role," HRI said in a report.

"However, the country's global openness is still disappointing ― the recruitment rate of foreign talent is very low and it struggles to deal with new hitches associated with multicultural households," it said.

Back in 2000, expatriates in Korea totaled just 490,000 but the tally jumped to 1.2 million this year. Approximately 10 percent of marriages are inter-racial, mostly Korean husbands in rural areas and foreign brides from Asian countries.

In addition, the influx of North Korean defectors has been on the rise as hundreds of people from the Communist regime seek asylum in the South every year.

As far as openness to foreign ideas and immigrants, however, Korea was one of the worst-performing countries among the 57 surveyed, according to the 2009 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Although an increasing number of overseas workers flow into the local labor markets, their proportion was a mere 0.8 percent. This compares to 15.2 percent in the United States and 9.3 percent in Germany.

The HRI pointed out that Asia's fourth-largest economy must make efforts to build up social and economic infrastructure in order to better embrace the multicultural features of society.

For example, children from multiracial families can be nurtured as global talent since they are used to both languages and traditions.

"Foreigners will account for a bigger proportion of our population in the future. We cannot live on our own any longer in this fast-globalizing world where 175 million people migrate every year," an HRI researcher said.

"We should brace for them with better infrastructure. Otherwise, social tensions are feared to rise due to conflicts between ethnic Koreans and foreigners, which would be bad for both sides," he said.

The tensions already seem to be on the rise. The number of foreign criminals amounted to 9,103 in 2004, but the figure climbed to 20,623 last year.

HRI warned that social conflicts will cause costs to rise. "The country might be forced to pay more for security. Plus, talented overseas workers might not join our workforce," it said.

voc200@koreatimes.co.kr