The number of Catholics in South Korea has slightly increased. 

The Catholic Church in South Korea said on Wednesday there were five-million-866-thousand Catholic adherents in the country last year, based on the counts by 16 dioceses across the nation. 

The figure accounts for eleven-point-one percent of the entire population and marked an increase of zero-point-one percentage point from a year earlier. 

The church posted an annual membership growth of one to two percent for years before it fell to less than one percent last year. 

The number of Catholic priests inched up by 70 to five-thousand-430 while the number of students in Catholic seminaries dropped to a 10-year low of one-thousand-273. 

Eighty-thousand-900 people were baptized into the Catholic faith in 2018, marking a decline of 16-point-four percent from a year earlier.