By Kang Shin-who
Staff reporter
The number of ethnic Koreans from China living in Seoul dropped for the fourth consecutive quarter in the first three months of this year, on the back of a tight job market here, causing an overall decline in the capital's foreign population.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Tuesday that the number of Korean-Chinese fell by nearly 14,000 or 7.8 percent from a year earlier to 164,960 during the period.
With the fall in the number of ethnic Koreans from China, the total number of foreigners living in Seoul also fell for the fourth straight quarter to 255,501, compared with a record high of 266,268 in the first quarter, a year ago.
Seoul government officials said it was the first time that the foreign population has fallen for four quarters in a row since it began to collect population data in 2005. The number of registered foreigners had been increasing at an average of 18 percent a year until last year.
"Ethnic Koreans mostly come here to get jobs and the drop in influx reflects the difficulty in getting work here amid the sluggish domestic economy," a Seoul city official said.
Immigration officials also cited the government's policy to reduce the number of foreign laborers coming to Korea as one of the reasons for the decrease.
"Last year, the government started to restrict the number of foreigners in the labor market to give more job opportunities to Koreans. We believe this could explain the decrease," an official from the Korea Immigration Service said.
According to the city government, ethnic Koreans account for 64.6 percent of the entire foreign population in Seoul with 164,960, followed by Chinese at 26,277. American civilians account for 13,277, Taiwanese 8,810, Japanese 6,719, Vietnamese 5,254, and Mongolians 4,012.
Of them, 134,755 held H2 working visit visas and 29,134 were living in the city after marrying Koreans. Some 18,554 came here to visit their relatives, and 18,396 to study.
Seoul's population stood at 10.46 million in the first quarter, down 0.27 percent from 10.49 million a year ago.
The dwindling number of ethnic Koreans is not a trend restricted to Seoul. The number across the nation also fell to 377,560 from 394,021 a year earlier.