The proportion of foreigners who bought real estate in South Korea last year hit a record high.

According to the data from the online real estate registry service run by the Supreme Court on Sunday, about 15-thousand-600 foreign nationals completed property purchases in 2023, accounting for a record zero-point-nine percent of the total land acquisitions.

The figure was a mere zero-point-two percent in 2010, when the nation started providing related data, but it steadily increased to zero-point-33 percent in 2014, zero-point-64 percent in 2018 and zero-point-75 percent in 2022.

Nearly 73 percent, or over eleven-thousand of the foreign buyers were Chinese nationals, followed by Americans at over 78-hundred and Canadians at about 16-hundred.

More than 12-thousand foreigners purchased residential properties, including apartments, taking up one-point-21 percent of the total acquisitions of residential properties.

The percentage, which stood at zero-point-five percent in 2015, also grew to zero-point-89 percent in 2018 and surpassed one percent for the first time in 2022.