Newly released figures show the number of new college graduates finding a job overseas or starting their own companies is on the rise. 

The Education Ministry and the Korean Educational Development Institute on Thursday said they tracked down over 580-thousand people who graduated from college, including two-year college and graduate school, in August of 2015 or February of last year, based on information from the state health insurance program and tax payments. 

Among them, those who found a job overseas stood at more than two-thousand-300 as of December of last year, up zero-point-three percentage points from a year earlier. 

The number of those starting their own business was almost four-thousand-800, up a tenth of a percentage point from a year earlier. 

The ministry and institute also surveyed more than half-a-million people who graduated from college and graduate school last year, and found that 67-point-seven percent of them were employed as of December of last year, up zero-point-two percentage points from a year earlier.