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According to a survey of nationwide marriage data, of the 8,596 men from rural areas or fishing villages who married last year, some 3,525 or 41 percent chose women from overseas. That's a rise of 5.1 percentage points from the year before.
Of those marriages, some 2,394 or two thirds were to Vietnamese women, up from 1,535 in 2005. The number of Korean men nationwide who married Vietnamese women reached 10,131, which is a 74 percent increase from 2005.
Park Kyung-ae of the National Statistical Office said that the number of Vietnamese brides in Korea under age 20 rose in 2006, with some 7,800 in their late teens, the most since 1990.
Marriages in total were up last year due to the double spring year according to the Lunar calendar. There were 332,800 marriages last year, which is 5.2 percent more than the year before. The rate of increase is the highest in 10 years since 1996 when there was a 9.1 percent increase.
Some 77.2 percent of marriages last year were first marriages, which is 3.3 percent higher than the year before. But second marriages decreased 2.3 percent to 12.4 percent of all marriages, the lowest since 1970 when statistics were first kept. The average age of those marrying for the first time was 30.9 for men and 27.8 for women.
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