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Registered foreigners are counted across 192 nationalities.

United Arab Emirates

People registered with United Arab Emirates nationality number 236, which is less than 0.1% of all registered foreigners and ranks 89 in size. Compared with 531 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is a decrease of about 55.6%. They live in 22 districts, and the largest counts are Seoul Jung-gu with 64, Seoul Yongsan-gu with 61, and Seoul Seocho-gu with 22. The index of dissimilarity (D) from Koreans is 0.867, the isolation index is 0, and interaction with Koreans is 0.947. The highest location quotient (LQ) is in Seoul Jung-gu at 118.2, where this nationality is 0.1% of the foreigners in that district. The continent of origin is West Asia. The largest age group is 20-24 at 13.5%, and men are 45.2%. This value alone is based on staying foreigners. Estimated mother tongues are Arabic at 56.8% and Malayalam at 11.4%.

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	United Arab Emirates	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
Registered foreigners	236	1,604,920	under 0.1% of the total
Districts of residence	22	250	8.8% of the total
Index of dissimilarity (D)	0.867	0.280	rank 1 of 107
Isolation index	0.0002	0.045	rank 37 of 107
Interaction with Koreans	0.947	0.955	rank 92 of 107
Continent	West Asia	11,391 (0.7% of the total)	2.1% 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.United Arab Emirates 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.

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Year	United Arab Emirates	Vietnam
2006	7	52,157
2007	14	67,197
2008	21	79,848
2009	27	86,166
2010	66	98,225
2011	58	110,564
2012	99	114,211
2013	330	113,843
2014	577	122,571
2015	531	128,042
2016	370	137,769
2017	398	151,385
2018	473	170,707
2019	572	187,334
2020	206	181,415
2021	282	178,928
2022	502	196,883
2023	362	227,930
2024	299	261,581
2025	236	293,907

Table 2.United Arab Emirates nationality, top 10 districts, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	District	United Arab Emirates Nationality	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Jung-gu	64	0.6
2	Seoul Yongsan-gu	61	0.5
3	Seoul Seocho-gu	22	0.5
4	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	20	0.1
5	Seoul Gangnam-gu	14	0.2
6	Seoul Gwangjin-gu	10	0.1
7	Seoul Seongdong-gu	8	0.1
8	Seoul Jongno-gu	6	0.1
9	Seoul Mapo-gu	4	0.0
10	Seoul Songpa-gu	4	0.1

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

Note: Nationwide, United Arab Emirates nationals make up 0.0% 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	United Arab Emirates Nationality	Location quotient (LQ)	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Jung-gu	64	118.2	0.1
2	Seoul Yongsan-gu	61	65.7	0.0
3	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	20	14.5	0.0
4	Seoul Seocho-gu	22	11.6	0.0
5	Jeollanam-do Jangseong-gun	2	10.1	0.0
6	Seoul Jongno-gu	6	9.5	0.0
7	Seoul Gwangjin-gu	10	6.6	0.0
8	Seoul Seongdong-gu	8	6.3	0.0
9	Seoul Gangnam-gu	14	5.5	0.0
10	Seoul Mapo-gu	4	2.4	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 United Arab Emirates nationality, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Visa category	Persons	Share
Other(G1)	133	56.4
Other statuses(ETC)	57	24.2
Student(D2)	30	12.7
General Trainee(D4)	14	5.9
Trade Management(D9)	2	0.8

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

Note: The rows of this table add to 236, the whole of the United Arab Emirates nationality.

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

Year 2025

Age group	Total	Male	Female	Share
0-4	25	16	9	3.4
5-9	52	28	24	7.1
10-14	61	26	35	8.4
15-19	67	29	38	9.2
20-24	98	45	53	13.5
25-29	74	34	40	10.2
30-34	72	26	46	9.9
35-39	60	23	37	8.2
40-44	59	27	32	8.1
45-49	71	30	41	9.8
50-54	29	18	11	4.0
55-59	24	11	13	3.3
60+	36	16	20	4.9

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

Only this table counts all foreign residents, so it totals 728 rather than the 236 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.

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Year
2008	0.0	0.0	0.0	9.5	28.6
2009	0.0	0.0	18.5	3.7	22.2
2010	0.0	0.0	18.2	4.5	45.5
2011	0.0	0.0	34.5	6.9	32.8
2012	19.2	0.0	25.3	22.2	16.2
2013	25.5	0.0	7.0	53.3	7.3
2014	50.9	0.2	5.5	36.7	3.5
2015	52.0	0.0	7.2	36.3	2.0
2016	64.0	0.0	14.3	13.7	5.0
2017	61.8	14.8	12.3	6.0	3.8
2018	62.2	16.5	12.5	5.1	2.5
2019	72.9	15.2	10.1	1.0	0.3
2020	28.6	45.1	21.4	1.9	1.9
2021	41.5	35.5	18.4	0.0	1.4
2022	65.7	21.9	9.4	0.0	1.2
2023	69.9	13.8	8.8	3.0	1.4
2024	67.6	18.4	9.4	2.7	1.0
2025	56.4	24.2	12.7	5.9	0.8

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.

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Year	Index of dissimilarity (D)	Isolation index	Interaction with Koreans
2014	0.869	0.000	0.968
2015	0.878	0.000	0.965
2016	0.871	0.000	0.967
2017	0.876	0.000	0.961
2018	0.886	0.001	0.952
2019	0.902	0.001	0.950
2020	0.858	0.000	0.955
2021	0.860	0.000	0.955
2022	0.866	0.001	0.948
2023	0.851	0.000	0.950
2024	0.864	0.000	0.947
2025	0.867	0.000	0.947

Table 6.United Arab Emirates nationality, mother-tongue compositionUnit: %

First language		Share
Arabic		56.8
Malayalam		11.4
Pashto		5.6
Telugu		4.9
Balochi		4.1
Bengali		3.6
Persian/Farsi		3.3
Tagalog/Filipino		3.3

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, United Arab Emirates 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	United Arab Emirates Nationality	Share of national
Seoul	223	94.5
Daejeon	4	1.7
Gyeonggi-do	2	0.8
Incheon	2	0.8
Jeollanam-do	2	0.8
Daegu	1	0.4
Busan	1	0.4
Sejong	1	0.4