English

Choose nationality

Registered foreigners are counted across 192 nationalities.

Sri Lanka

People registered with Sri Lanka nationality number 36,951, which is 2.3% of all registered foreigners and ranks 13 in size. Compared with 25,171 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 46.8%. They live in 243 districts, and the largest counts are Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si with 1,750, Gyeongsangnam-do Gimhae-si with 1,733, and Ulsan Dong-gu with 1,449. The index of dissimilarity (D) from Koreans is 0.536, the isolation index is 0.003, and interaction with Koreans is 0.948. The highest location quotient (LQ) is in Jeollanam-do Jindo-gun at 31.6, where this nationality is 2.3% of the foreigners in that district. The continent of origin is South Asia. The largest age group is 30-34 at 29.1%, and men are 87.2%. This value alone is based on staying foreigners. Estimated mother tongues are Sinhala at 68.8% and Tamil at 25.4%.

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	Sri Lanka	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
Registered foreigners	36,951	1,604,920	2.3% of the total
Districts of residence	243	250	97.2% of the total
Index of dissimilarity (D)	0.536	0.280	rank 65 of 107
Isolation index	0.0031	0.045	rank 9 of 107
Interaction with Koreans	0.948	0.955	rank 89 of 107
Continent	South Asia	193,031 (12.0% of the total)	19.1% 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.Sri Lanka 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	Sri Lanka	Vietnam
2006	11,051	52,157
2007	12,078	67,197
2008	14,256	79,848
2009	14,432	86,166
2010	17,369	98,225
2011	20,483	110,564
2012	21,002	114,211
2013	21,883	113,843
2014	24,582	122,571
2015	25,171	128,042
2016	26,036	137,769
2017	25,323	151,385
2018	24,309	170,707
2019	23,476	187,334
2020	21,231	181,415
2021	18,915	178,928
2022	22,282	196,883
2023	28,258	227,930
2024	33,965	261,581
2025	36,951	293,907

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Sri Lanka Nationality	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si	1,750	3.2
2	Gyeongsangnam-do Gimhae-si	1,733	6.4
3	Ulsan Dong-gu	1,449	13.0
4	Gyeongsangnam-do Geoje-si	1,156	7.0
5	Gyeonggi-do Gimpo-si	947	3.6
6	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongju-si	897	5.7
7	Jeollanam-do Wando-gun	874	15.1
8	Chungcheongbuk-do Eumseong-gun	791	5.2
9	Gyeongsangnam-do Yangsan-si	696	7.3
10	Ulsan Ulju-gun	691	7.4

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

Note: Nationwide, Sri Lanka nationals make up 2.3% 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	Sri Lanka Nationality	Location quotient (LQ)	Share of local foreigners
1	Jeollanam-do Jindo-gun	636	31.6	2.3
2	Jeollanam-do Wando-gun	874	27.2	2.0
3	Ulsan Dong-gu	1,449	13.5	1.0
4	Jeollanam-do Yeongam-gun	442	12.3	0.9
5	Chungcheongbuk-do Eumseong-gun	791	11.7	0.8
6	Daegu Gunwi-gun	148	9.2	0.7
7	Chungcheongbuk-do Jincheon-gun	565	9.1	0.7
8	Jeollanam-do Haenam-gun	386	8.6	0.6
9	Gyeongsangnam-do Haman-gun	329	7.9	0.6
10	Incheon Ongjin-gun	111	7.8	0.6

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 Sri Lanka nationality, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Visa category	Persons	Share
Non-professional Employment(E9)	22,702	61.4
Specially Designated Activities(E7)	6,507	17.6
Dependent Family(F3)	3,340	9.0
Student(D2)	1,054	2.9
Other(G1)	822	2.2
Other statuses(ETC)	667	1.8
General Trainee(D4)	503	1.4
Residential(F2)	414	1.1
Other statuses	942	2.5

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

Note: The rows of this table add to 36,951, the whole of the Sri Lanka nationality.

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

Year 2025

Age group	Total	Male	Female	Share
0-4	732	376	356	1.9
5-9	412	202	210	1.1
10-14	158	89	69	0.4
15-19	113	57	56	0.3
20-24	3,230	2,716	514	8.3
25-29	8,122	6,847	1,275	21.0
30-34	11,242	9,831	1,411	29.1
35-39	7,494	6,874	620	19.4
40-44	4,323	4,102	221	11.2
45-49	1,756	1,675	81	4.5
50-54	580	521	59	1.5
55-59	297	266	31	0.8
60+	238	196	42	0.6

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

Only this table counts all foreign residents, so it totals 38,697 rather than the 36,951 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	89.2	0.0	0.0	0.4	1.3
2009	91.3	0.0	0.0	0.4	1.4
2010	96.6	0.0	0.0	0.4	1.1
2011	96.2	0.0	0.0	0.4	1.4
2012	94.3	0.0	0.0	0.5	3.0
2013	94.3	0.0	0.1	0.5	2.7
2014	94.5	0.0	0.2	0.5	2.2
2015	94.2	0.0	0.2	0.6	2.0
2016	94.0	0.0	0.2	0.8	1.7
2017	93.6	0.4	0.4	1.0	1.6
2018	92.8	0.5	0.6	1.1	1.7
2019	91.3	0.8	0.8	1.2	2.0
2020	85.3	1.2	0.8	1.1	2.2
2021	84.7	2.0	1.2	1.3	2.3
2022	84.2	2.7	1.8	1.3	2.2
2023	74.8	11.8	3.0	1.2	2.0
2024	68.5	14.8	6.8	1.8	1.9
2025	61.4	17.6	9.0	2.9	2.2

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	0.571	0.002	0.965
2015	0.562	0.002	0.965
2016	0.561	0.002	0.965
2017	0.551	0.002	0.965
2018	0.551	0.002	0.964
2019	0.546	0.002	0.963
2020	0.540	0.002	0.967
2021	0.541	0.002	0.968
2022	0.542	0.002	0.964
2023	0.542	0.003	0.957
2024	0.539	0.003	0.952
2025	0.536	0.003	0.948

Table 6.Sri Lanka nationality, mother-tongue compositionUnit: %

First language		Share
Sinhala		68.8
Tamil		25.4
Malayalam		3.3
Telugu		1.1
Gujarati		0.5

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, Sri Lanka 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	Sri Lanka Nationality	Share of national
Gyeonggi-do	8,436	22.8
Gyeongsangnam-do	6,108	16.5
Jeollanam-do	4,109	11.1
Gyeongsangbuk-do	3,129	8.5
Ulsan	2,456	6.6
Chungcheongnam-do	2,425	6.6
Chungcheongbuk-do	2,383	6.4
Jeollabuk-do	1,568	4.2
Daegu	1,505	4.1
Busan	1,333	3.6
Incheon	1,035	2.8
Jeju-do	847	2.3
Gwangju	626	1.7
Seoul	339	0.9
Gangwon-do	334	0.9
Daejeon	173	0.5
Sejong	145	0.4