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The number of marriages between Koreans and foreign spouses rose 17.2 percent in 2023 from a year earlier, data showed Thursday.

The number of multicultural marriages came to 20,431 last year, up from 17,428 cases the previous year, according to the data from Statistics Korea.

It marked the second on-year increase.

The number of international marriages fell sharply to 16,177 cases in 2020 from the previous year's 24,721 and slid further to 13,926 in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic before bouncing back in 2022.

Of the total marriages in Korea last year, multicultural marriages accounted for 10.6 percent, up from the previous year's 9.5 percent.

Couples made up of Korean men and foreign women accounted for 69.8 percent of all multicultural marriages here.

Vietnamese women took up the largest share of all foreign wives at 27.9 percent, followed by Chinese at 17.4 percent and Thai at 9.9 percent.

Of foreign husbands, those from China and the United States accounted for 6.9 percent each, followed by Vietnam with 3.9 percent and Canada with 1.4 percent.

On average, grooms in multicultural marriages were 37.2 years old and brides were 29.5 years old.

The number of divorces among multicultural couples went up 3.9 percent on-year to 8,158 in 2023, the first increase in 13 years.

The number of babies born to multicultural married couples dropped 3 percent on-year to 12,150 last year.

But their proportion out of the total newborns in Korea inched up 0.3 percentage point to 5.3 percent amid the country's ultra-low birth rate. (Yonhap)