The number of foreigners naturalized as Koreans surpassed the landmark 100,000 on Monday, 63 years after the establishment of the South Korean government in 1948, the Justice Ministry said.
During a ceremony held at the government complex south of Seoul, a 55-year-old Indian professor, Roy Alok Kumar, became the 100,000th foreigner to receive Korean citizenship after 31 years of living here, the ministry said in a release.
Under the revised immigration law allowing dual citizenship, Kumar retains his Indian citizenship as well, the ministry said.
Although the average annual number of naturalized citizens stood at 34 until 2000, the figure has sharply risen to 9,816 in the 2001-2010 period, accounting for 98 percent of the total, the ministry said.
The hike is in tandem with the steady and growing influx of foreign spouses from Southeast Asian nations through international marriage and new immigration laws allowing Chinese nationals of Korean background to acquire Korean citizenship, officials noted.
Among ethnic groups, Chinese topped the list with 79,163, or 79 percent of the total, followed by Vietnamese with 9,207, the Filipinos with 5,233 and Taiwanese with 2,093, the ministry data showed.
"The recent increase of naturalization can be attributed to the growing preferences among foreigners with the nation's rising status," said Cha Gyu-geun, the ministry official in charge of immigration.
South Korea's first naturalized citizen was a Taiwanese in 1957. (Yonhap)
