OECD "Last year, the largest ever legal immigration to an advanced country..."Going up 50% to Korea"

While legal immigration to developed countries reached an all-time high last year, the number of immigrants to Korea also increased by more than 50%.

According to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the OECD on the 14th local time, 6.5 million people immigrated to 38 OECD member countries last year with permanent residency, the highest number ever.

The country with the highest influx of immigrants last year was the United States, which received 1,189,800 new immigrants, up 13.4% from last year.

The country with the largest increase in immigrants compared to the previous year was the UK, with an increase of 52.9 percent, and South Korea also ranked second in the number of immigrants with an increase of 50.9 percent.

The number of immigrants to Korea jumped 50.9% from 57,800 in 2022 to 87,100 last year.

About a third of member countries accepted record numbers of migrants last year, the OECD said, citing labor shortages caused by economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in the demographic structure of member countries as factors for increasing immigrants.

The influx of immigrants is considered to have contributed to the inflation crisis and the handling of labor shortages in developed countries, but there is also a growing public opinion against the growing influx of immigrants, according to the British daily Financial Times.