English

Choose nationality

Registered foreigners are counted across 192 nationalities.

Pakistan

People registered with Pakistan nationality number 17,395, which is 1.1% of all registered foreigners and ranks 18 in size. Compared with 9,738 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 78.6%. They live in 224 districts, and the largest counts are Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si with 765, Incheon Seo-gu with 666, and Gyeongsangnam-do Gimhae-si with 631. The index of dissimilarity (D) from Koreans is 0.422, the isolation index is 0.001, and interaction with Koreans is 0.958. The highest location quotient (LQ) is in Gyeongsangnam-do Haman-gun at 11.5, where this nationality is 0.4% of the foreigners in that district. The continent of origin is South Asia. The largest age group is 25-29 at 20.2%, and men are 81.4%. This value alone is based on staying foreigners. Estimated mother tongues are Punjabi at 51.4% and Pashto at 18%.

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy 2025 (registered foreigners by nationality, registered foreigners by nationality and district, registered foreigners by status of stay), staying foreigners by nationality and age

The index of dissimilarity, the isolation index, and the location quotient are calculated from the open dataset.

Table 1.Key indicators and benchmarks, 2025Unit: people, organizations, index

Year 2025

Indicators	Pakistan	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
Registered foreigners	17,395	1,604,920	1.1% of the total
Districts of residence	224	250	89.6% of the total
Index of dissimilarity (D)	0.422	0.280	rank 89 of 107
Isolation index	0.0008	0.045	rank 24 of 107
Interaction with Koreans	0.958	0.955	rank 52 of 107
Continent	South Asia	193,031 (12.0% of the total)	9.0% of those from South Asia

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by nationality), segregation indicators from the open dataset.

Note: the dissimilarity index D measures how far a nationality's distribution across districts differs from that of Korean nationals; 0 means the two distributions match and 1 means complete separation. Isolation is the probability that a member meets someone of the same nationality, and interaction the probability of meeting a Korean resident. In the All registered foreigners column the three indices treat all registered foreigners as one group and use the same formulas. In the Relative to total column, rank 1 is the highest value among nationalities with 100 or more registered foreigners that year; in the continent row that column gives this nationality's share of all registered foreigners from the continent.

Figure 1.Pakistan nationals among registered foreigners, 2006–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year.

Note: The vertical scale resets to the size of the selected nationality.

View as table

Year	Pakistan	Vietnam
2006	8,929	52,157
2007	8,047	67,197
2008	7,871	79,848
2009	7,833	86,166
2010	8,328	98,225
2011	8,215	110,564
2012	7,876	114,211
2013	8,273	113,843
2014	9,017	122,571
2015	9,738	128,042
2016	10,426	137,769
2017	10,388	151,385
2018	11,020	170,707
2019	11,523	187,334
2020	10,644	181,415
2021	10,216	178,928
2022	11,806	196,883
2023	13,762	227,930
2024	15,950	261,581
2025	17,395	293,907

Table 2.Pakistan nationality, top 10 districts, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	District	Pakistan Nationality	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si	765	1.4
2	Incheon Seo-gu	666	4.0
3	Gyeongsangnam-do Gimhae-si	631	2.3
4	Gyeonggi-do Gimpo-si	556	2.1
5	Daegu Dalseo-gu	422	3.1
6	Gyeonggi-do Paju-si	383	2.3
7	Busan Sasang-gu	375	5.0
8	Seoul Yongsan-gu	366	2.8
9	Gyeonggi-do Yangju-si	358	3.5
10	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongsan-si	354	1.6

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by district and nationality).

Note: Nationwide, Pakistan nationals make up 1.1% of all registered foreigners, so an area whose share is above that holds relatively many of them.

Table 3.10 districts with the highest location quotient, 2025Unit: people, ratio, %

Year 2025

Rank	District	Pakistan Nationality	Location quotient (LQ)	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeongsangnam-do Haman-gun	224	11.5	0.4
2	Gyeongsangbuk-do Seongju-gun	112	8.1	0.3
3	Chungcheongbuk-do Jincheon-gun	174	5.9	0.2
4	Busan Sasang-gu	375	5.7	0.2
5	Gyeonggi-do Pocheon-si	262	5.5	0.2
6	Seoul Yongsan-gu	366	5.4	0.2
7	Gyeongsangbuk-do Goryeong-gun	51	5.1	0.2
8	Chungcheongbuk-do Eumseong-gun	152	4.8	0.2
9	Gangwon-do Goseong-gun	43	4.7	0.2
10	Gyeongsangbuk-do Chilgok-gun	161	4.5	0.2

Source: Location quotient from the open dataset.

Note: the location quotient is the local share divided by the national share; above 1.5 counts as over-representation.

Table 4.By status of stay Pakistan nationality, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Visa category	Persons	Share
Non-professional Employment(E9)	4,333	24.9
Dependent Family(F3)	2,381	13.7
Other(G1)	2,221	12.8
Student(D2)	2,118	12.2
Specially Designated Activities(E7)	1,646	9.5
Residential(F2)	1,017	5.8
Marriage Migration(F6)	876	5.0
Other statuses(ETC)	875	5.0
Other statuses	1,928	11.1

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by status of stay and nationality).

Note: The rows of this table add to 17,395, the whole of the Pakistan nationality.

Table 5.Age and sex, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Age group	Total	Male	Female	Share
0-4	1,039	531	508	5.2
5-9	689	357	332	3.5
10-14	391	214	177	2.0
15-19	314	199	115	1.6
20-24	1,411	1,101	310	7.1
25-29	4,010	3,256	754	20.2
30-34	3,587	3,012	575	18.1
35-39	2,695	2,304	391	13.6
40-44	1,775	1,536	239	8.9
45-49	1,236	1,106	130	6.2
50-54	1,037	979	58	5.2
55-59	872	835	37	4.4
60+	785	726	59	4.0

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (staying foreigners by nationality and age).

Only this table counts all foreign residents, so it totals 19,841 rather than the 17,395 registered foreigners

Figure 2.Composition by age and sex, 2025Unit: %

Year 2025

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (staying foreigners by nationality and age).

Note: The bar length is the share each cell holds within the whole nationality. This figure alone uses staying foreigners, so its total differs from registered foreigners.

Figure 3.Change in status-of-stay composition, 2008–2025Unit: %

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year (registered foreigners by status of stay and nationality).

Note: The share each status holds within this nationality in that year. The five largest statuses in 2025 are drawn.

View as table

Year
2008	53.9	5.6	1.9	4.0	0.0
2009	56.6	6.6	2.9	4.1	0.0
2010	66.0	6.7	4.1	4.2	0.7
2011	56.4	8.4	9.5	5.6	0.8
2012	49.7	9.8	10.9	7.7	0.0
2013	47.4	10.5	11.6	9.3	0.0
2014	45.1	11.0	13.1	10.6	0.0
2015	38.4	11.3	20.0	10.8	0.0
2016	36.9	10.8	21.7	11.3	0.0
2017	34.8	11.1	20.4	13.2	0.0
2018	30.4	10.7	22.7	14.9	0.0
2019	27.8	10.2	22.9	16.0	0.0
2020	24.5	8.8	21.4	14.0	0.0
2021	22.0	10.0	19.3	13.2	0.0
2022	27.9	10.1	15.8	13.2	2.9
2023	30.7	10.2	13.2	11.8	5.7
2024	28.2	12.6	13.0	11.3	7.3
2025	24.9	13.7	12.8	12.2	9.5

Figure 4.Residential segregation and exposure over time, 2014–2025Unit: index

Indicators

Source: Segregation indicators from the open dataset.

Note: the dissimilarity index D measures how far a nationality's distribution across districts differs from that of Korean nationals, isolation is the probability that a member meets someone of the same nationality, and interaction the probability of meeting a Korean resident. The three run on different ranges, so they are selected one at a time.

View as table

Year	Index of dissimilarity (D)	Isolation index	Interaction with Koreans
2014	0.463	0.000	0.969
2015	0.466	0.001	0.968
2016	0.455	0.001	0.968
2017	0.458	0.001	0.968
2018	0.454	0.001	0.967
2019	0.445	0.001	0.967
2020	0.443	0.001	0.970
2021	0.432	0.001	0.971
2022	0.428	0.001	0.968
2023	0.429	0.001	0.964
2024	0.424	0.001	0.960
2025	0.422	0.001	0.958

Table 6.Pakistan nationality, mother-tongue compositionUnit: %

First language		Share
Punjabi		51.4
Pashto		18.0
Sindhi		14.4
Urdu		7.0
Balochi		3.0
Brahui		1.2
Pahari-Pothwari		1.2
Uzbek		0.8

Source: Ethnologue 24th edition, first-language shares by country.

Note: the estimated demand on the language page is this share multiplied by the registered foreign population of each nationality. Shares below 0.5% are not listed, and a person who speaks more than one language is not distinguished.

Figure 5.By province, Pakistan nationality, 2025Unit: persons

Year 2025

Count range

Note: The boundaries are shapes simplified for display and are drawn as pen lines. The fill values are the provincial totals from the yearbook and do not depend on the shapes.

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by nationality and district), summed to the province level.

View as table

Province	Pakistan Nationality	Share of national
Gyeonggi-do	5,438	31.3
Gyeongsangnam-do	2,022	11.6
Incheon	1,645	9.5
Seoul	1,540	8.9
Gyeongsangbuk-do	1,160	6.7
Daegu	1,149	6.6
Busan	1,109	6.4
Chungcheongbuk-do	574	3.3
Chungcheongnam-do	571	3.3
Daejeon	398	2.3
Gwangju	390	2.2
Jeollabuk-do	384	2.2
Ulsan	334	1.9
Gangwon-do	218	1.3
Jeollanam-do	214	1.2
Jeju-do	147	0.8
Sejong	102	0.6