By Lee Kyung-min

The Seoul Metropolitan Government survey showed Sunday that more than half of the foreigners living in the capital said they liked the city after living here.

The city conducted the survey of 2,500 foreigners living here from October on whether their perception of the city improved.

More than half, or 52.4 percent, said this was the case so with 5.2 percent saying it had improved greatly.

On a 10 point scale, Chinese on average gave the highest review (6.41), followed by Americans (5.72), Japanese (5.79), Taiwanese (5.87) and Europeans (5.88).

However, 41.9 percent said it had remained unchanged and 5.7 percent said it had become worse.

Of those who rated the city negatively, 25.5 percent said the city was not open to foreigners.

Other reasons for their negative views included a lack of social services (21.3 percent), mistreatment and discrimination (20.4 percent) and a lack of administrative services (18.7 percent).

The number of foreigners living in Korea is steadily increasing. According to the Ministry of Justice, as of June 2016, the number was 2,001,828, accounting for 3.9 percent of the nation's total population.

Given the number has been increasing 100,000 annually, the number is expected to surpass 2.1 million by end of this month, the ministry said.

More than half of them are Chinese (54.5 percent), followed by Vietnamese (8.8 percent) and Americans (4.7 percent).

Over 65 percent of them live in Seoul and the surrounding regions, with 33 percent living in Gyeonggi Province and 27.1 percent in Seoul.