English

Choose nationality

Registered foreigners are counted across 192 nationalities.

Saudi Arabia

People registered with Saudi Arabia nationality number 872, which is 0.1% of all registered foreigners and ranks 50 in size. Compared with 907 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is a decrease of about 3.9%. They live in 55 districts, and the largest counts are Seoul Yongsan-gu with 175, Seoul Songpa-gu with 115, and Seoul Gangdong-gu with 76. The index of dissimilarity (D) from Koreans is 0.774, the isolation index is 0, and interaction with Koreans is 0.967. The highest location quotient (LQ) is in Seoul Yongsan-gu at 50.8, where this nationality is 0.1% of the foreigners in that district. The continent of origin is West Asia. The largest age group is 30-34 at 20.7%, and men are 51.7%. This value alone is based on staying foreigners. Estimated mother tongues are Arabic at 85.3% and Tagalog/Filipino at 2.8%.

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	Saudi Arabia	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
Registered foreigners	872	1,604,920	0.1% of the total
Districts of residence	55	250	22.0% of the total
Index of dissimilarity (D)	0.774	0.280	rank 9 of 107
Isolation index	0.0002	0.045	rank 37 of 107
Interaction with Koreans	0.967	0.955	rank 5 of 107
Continent	West Asia	11,391 (0.7% of the total)	7.7% of those from West 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.Saudi Arabia 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	Saudi Arabia	Vietnam
2006	114	52,157
2007	243	67,197
2008	301	79,848
2009	360	86,166
2010	444	98,225
2011	1,164	110,564
2012	766	114,211
2013	1,142	113,843
2014	889	122,571
2015	907	128,042
2016	973	137,769
2017	924	151,385
2018	910	170,707
2019	1,004	187,334
2020	776	181,415
2021	770	178,928
2022	925	196,883
2023	823	227,930
2024	1,080	261,581
2025	872	293,907

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Saudi Arabia Nationality	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Yongsan-gu	175	1.3
2	Seoul Songpa-gu	115	1.8
3	Seoul Gangdong-gu	76	1.6
4	Seoul Dongdaemun-gu	69	0.3
5	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	52	0.3
6	Seoul Seocho-gu	47	1.0
7	Seoul Gangnam-gu	45	0.7
8	Gyeonggi-do Hanam-si	38	1.4
9	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	27	0.2
10	Gyeonggi-do Goyang-si Deogyang-gu	21	0.4

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

Note: Nationwide, Saudi Arabia nationals make up 0.1% 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	Saudi Arabia Nationality	Location quotient (LQ)	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Yongsan-gu	175	50.8	0.1
2	Seoul Dongdaemun-gu	69	11.7	0.0
3	Seoul Songpa-gu	115	10.5	0.0
4	Seoul Gangdong-gu	76	8.9	0.0
5	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	52	7.2	0.0
6	Gyeonggi-do Hanam-si	38	6.8	0.0
7	Seoul Seocho-gu	47	6.7	0.0
8	Seoul Jung-gu	11	5.5	0.0
9	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	27	5.3	0.0
10	Seoul Gangnam-gu	45	4.7	0.0

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 Saudi Arabia nationality, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Visa category	Persons	Share
Dependent Family(F3)	340	39.0
Other statuses(ETC)	181	20.8
General Trainee(D4)	174	20.0
Student(D2)	67	7.7
Corporate Investment(D8)	62	7.1
Residential(F2)	12	1.4
Other(G1)	9	1.0
Marriage Migration(F6)	7	0.8
Other statuses	20	2.3

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

Note: The rows of this table add to 872, the whole of the Saudi Arabia nationality.

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

Year 2025

Age group	Total	Male	Female	Share
0-4	118	57	61	9.8
5-9	125	52	73	10.3
10-14	60	29	31	5.0
15-19	46	29	17	3.8
20-24	114	53	61	9.4
25-29	156	54	102	12.9
30-34	251	123	128	20.7
35-39	170	113	57	14.0
40-44	82	57	25	6.8
45-49	30	21	9	2.5
50-54	24	19	5	2.0
55-59	13	6	7	1.1
60+	21	12	9	1.7

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

Only this table counts all foreign residents, so it totals 1,210 rather than the 872 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	55.8	0.0	11.3	7.0	1.7
2009	59.2	0.0	5.6	13.9	1.1
2010	53.6	0.0	10.8	12.8	0.7
2011	59.7	0.1	9.5	10.2	0.2
2012	44.3	0.5	21.5	18.0	0.7
2013	40.3	0.2	30.8	15.3	0.7
2014	27.4	0.6	31.5	32.8	1.6
2015	30.7	0.2	16.9	45.5	1.4
2016	36.1	0.8	9.7	46.5	0.9
2017	35.8	14.6	10.8	32.3	0.8
2018	36.2	18.2	14.2	20.9	1.1
2019	38.4	19.1	17.2	14.0	5.0
2020	33.4	27.3	14.4	10.4	8.2
2021	29.9	32.9	12.6	8.3	4.8
2022	33.3	30.1	19.5	5.9	6.5
2023	39.2	19.2	22.4	5.8	8.4
2024	45.8	14.1	17.8	6.2	11.5
2025	39.0	20.8	20.0	7.7	7.1

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	0.747	0.000	0.971
2015	0.745	0.000	0.972
2016	0.760	0.000	0.972
2017	0.770	0.000	0.968
2018	0.779	0.000	0.965
2019	0.773	0.001	0.960
2020	0.779	0.001	0.964
2021	0.781	0.000	0.965
2022	0.769	0.000	0.966
2023	0.769	0.000	0.962
2024	0.779	0.000	0.966
2025	0.774	0.000	0.967

Table 6.Saudi Arabia nationality, mother-tongue compositionUnit: %

First language		Share
Arabic		85.3
Tagalog/Filipino		2.8
Punjabi		2.4
Urdu		2.2
Rohingya		1.5
Swahili		1.2
Telugu		1.1
Persian/Farsi		0.7

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, Saudi Arabia 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	Saudi Arabia Nationality	Share of national
Seoul	703	80.6
Gyeonggi-do	91	10.4
Daejeon	19	2.2
Incheon	17	1.9
Busan	16	1.8
Gyeongsangbuk-do	8	0.9
Gwangju	8	0.9
Gangwon-do	2	0.2
Gyeongsangnam-do	2	0.2
Jeju-do	2	0.2
Chungcheongnam-do	2	0.2
Chungcheongbuk-do	2	0.2