The number of South Korean couples who got divorced due to conflicts over money surged almost 78 per cent in the past decade, a survey said Tuesday (April 5), indicating that financial problems are becoming a major factor in the rising divorce rate.

According to the survey of 4,405 divorced people conducted between 1990-2009 by one of the country's leading matchmaking firms Sunwoo, 12.7 per cent of marriages that ended in divorce between 2000-2009 attributed the split to financial problems, up from 7.1 per cent in 1990-1999.

Some 15.5 per cent split up due to a spouse's affair in the 2000s, up from 12.7 per cent in the 1990s, while a family row took up 11.2 per cent, a rise from 7.3 per cent, the study showed.

However, the survey said that divorces due to domestic violence dropped from 5.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent during the same period.

As more middle-aged or older couples got divorced than before, the average age during one's first divorce also increased from 35.6 to 38.4 for males and from 31.2 to 33.9 for females, the survey said.

"Since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, economic factors have become some of the most important matters for a family," Gu Ki-dong, a professor at Shingu University who jointly conducted the survey, said in a statement.

In 2010, 326,000 couples tied the knot while 116,000 other pairs went their separate ways, surging from 42,000 divorces in 1990, according to the national statistics agency.