Statistic Observation of Marriages, Births, and Children in Multi-cultural Families and Policy Perspectives in Korea

Lee, Ji Hyun; Hahn, Myung Hee; Chung, Sung Hoon; Choi, Yong Sung; Chang, Ji Young; Bae, Chong Woo; Kim, Yu Kyung; Kim, Hye Ryun

Abstract

PURPOSE
Recently, the trend of multi-cultural families is rising in number due to increasing marriage-based immigrants in Korea. We evaluated statistic changes of characteristics in international marriage, births, and off-springs for the past 20 years in Korea.
METHODS
The annual report of national population from Statistics Korea, the survey results about the present status of resident foreigners from Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare, Korea Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and editorials from Health and Welfare Forum and other related reports of Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare were used.
RESULTS
There were 35,098 (10.8%) international marriages among total 326,104 marriages in 2010 in Korea. The regional distribution of the international marriage was the highest in Gyeonggi (18.5%), and the lowest in Jeju (1.1%). The metropolitan area Seoul (15.4%), Incheon (4.5%) and Gyeonggi (18.3%) comprised one third of the entire international marriage. The number of childbirths was 13,443 (2.9%) in 2008, 19,024 (4.3%) in 2009, and 20,312 (4.3%) in 2010 with increasing trend. The number of off-springs was 44,258 in 2007, 58,007 in 2008, 99,684 in 2009 and 105,502 in 2010. Children less than 18 years old was 93.1%. We expected 1.5 times of increase over the next coming 10 years in the number of multi-cultural international marriage and off-springs compared with 2011.
CONCLUSION
When we evaluated the characteristics of multi-cultural marriages, childbirths, and off-springs, systemic nationwide care seemed to be necessary in the aspect of health problems such as perinatology, obstetrics, neonatology, and pediatrics. We expect our results to be utilized for the basic health data.