The number of newly naturalized citizens and foreigners residing in South Korea has reached three-point-four percent of the nation’s total population.
 
The Interior Ministry and Statistics Korea revealed the latest tally on Tuesday at over one-point-71 million as of November first. 

That's larger than the population of North Chungcheong Province where just around one-point-six million people live. 
 
The number has more than tripled over the past ten years from roughly 536-thousand in 2006 when the first census of foreign residents was conducted.
 
Of them, eight-point-eight percent have South Korean citizenship, while eleven-point-five percent are children of foreign residents. Nearly 80 percent don’t have South Korean citizenship.
 
Fifty-two-point-eight percent of foreign residents are from China: some 37 percent are Korean-Chinese and 15-point-seven percent are Chinese.