Vietnamese crime rate in Japan stands at all-time high: report

By Vu Minh April 12, 2018 | 08:03 pm PT

Officers of Japan's railway police set up a stand from where to survey passengers at Tokyo station in Tokyo. Photo by Reuters/Thomas Peter

The Vietnamese expat community has out-crimed China to take the infamous rank for the first time.

The reputation of Vietnamese people living in Japan has been tarnished following a Japanese police report that said they committed more crimes than any other foreign non-permanent residents living in the country last year.

Vietnam's expat community has taken over the unwanted top spot from China, Japanese police reported on Thursday, according to Kyodo News.

Police recorded 5,140 crimes committed by Vietnamese people in 2017, up from 3,177 the year before and accounting for 30.2 percent of the total number of crimes committed by foreign nationals.

Shoplifting accounted for 2,037 cases, while cases of burglary jumped to 325 in 2017 from just 12 the previous year.

The infamous list includes China in second with 4,701 criminal cases, followed by Brazil (1,058) and South Korea (1,038).

In terms of numbers of offenders, China stood top with 3,159 nationals, followed by Vietnam with 2,549, Kyodo cited data from Japan’s National Police Agency as saying.

The agency said the number of non-permanent residents from Vietnam grew more than six-fold from 2008 to 2017, when it reached about 260,000.

Vietnam has surpassed Brazil to become the fourth biggest minority group in Japan.

The number of Vietnamese students in Japan grew more than 12-fold between 2010 and 2016 to around 54,000, Bloomberg cited the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) as saying in a report last year.