The population of foreign residents rose 41.6 percent from 960,000 in 2010 to 1.36 million last year, accounting for 2.7 percent of South Korea's total population, a national census showed Wednesday.
As of November 1 last year, Chinese citizens who have stayed for at least three months stood at 700,000 or 51.6 percent of the total foreign population, including 500,000 ethnic Koreans from China, according to Statistical Korea.
South Korea's total population rose 2.7 percent from five years ago to 51.07 million in 2015, growing an average of 0.5 percent annually.
Those aged over 65 years increased 2.2 percent to 6.57 million, accounting for 13.2 percent of the total. South Korea would become an aged society when the percentage reaches 14 percent. The working age population increased from 35.5 million in 2010 to 36.2 million in 2015.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com