Marriages in South Korea have become as rare as in the poverty-stricken days in 1970s, sending more looking for life companions beyond the border, data showed.

According to a marriage and divorce findings for 2018 from the Statistics Korea, the country’s crude marriage rate, which refers to the annual number of marriages per 1,000 people, was 5.0 last year, the lowest figure since the agency began compiling related data in 1970. The crude marriage rate was 9.2 in 1970 and hit its highest at 10.6 in 1980 before turning to a gradual falling trend. In 2001, there were only 6.7 marriages per 1,000 people, marking the first time for the crude marriage rate to fall below 7.

Last year, 257,622 couples tied the knot, down 2.6 percent from a year ago, data showed. It is the seven straight year of decline since 2012. The last time the country showed such poor reading were the years in the onset of the data compiling - 239,456 in 1971 and 244,780 in 1972.

Statistics Korea said that the overall drop in the number of marriages last year is mainly due to demographic and economic factors, and change in values. It said that the number of people in their early 30s that most belong to the marriageable age group is continuing to shrink.

Meanwhile, cross-national marriages rose last year to 22,698, up 8.9 percent from a year ago. It is the largest increase in 13 years since 22.3 percent in 2005.

Seven out of 10 international marriages last year involved Korean men finding foreign wives. Data showed that 38.2 percent of foreign women that married Korean men were from Vietnam, 22.1 percent from China, and 9.4 percent from Thailand.

By Kim Tae-joon and Lee Eun-joo

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