Job Seeker

The status code is D10, and it covers Job seeking and internships for professional and technical workers, including D-2 graduates.

People registered under the Job Seeker (D10) status number 21,933, which is 1.4% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 5,251 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 317.7%. The largest nationalities are Vietnam at 46.6%, China at 15.4%, and Uzbekistan at 9.5%. They are found in 225 districts, and the largest counts are Dongdaemun-gu with 936, Gwanak-gu with 900, and Gyeongsan-si with 814.

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

Note: the status families are exactly as the yearbook groups them. The overseas Korean status (F-4) does not appear on this page. Its holders file a place-of-residence report rather than a foreign-resident registration, so they are outside the registered foreigner statistics; they are not absent from the country. On the staying basis they were the largest single status in 2025, at 556,288.

Table 1.Key indicators and benchmarks, 2025Unit: persons, places, %

Year 2025

Indicators	Job Seeker	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	21,933	1,604,920	1.4% of the total
Nationalities counted	138	192	71.9% of the total
Districts of residence	225	250	90.0% of the total

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

Job Seeker ranks #3 by size within the D group.

Table 2.Registered foreigners by status family, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Family	Persons	Share
F family, residence, family, and overseas Koreans	589,527	36.7
E family, employment	493,577	30.8
D family, study, training and investment	341,450	21.3
H group, Visiting Employment and Working Holiday	84,971	5.3
G group, other	61,380	3.8
Outside the families, other statuses	34,015	2.1

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

The 6 groups sum to 1,604,920, the same as all registered foreigners.

Note: a family is the sum of the statuses inside it, so adding a family together with its individual statuses counts the same people twice.

The jade bar is the D group, the group Job Seeker falls under.

Figure 1.Job Seeker and all of the D group, 2009–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year.

Putting the status and the group on one axis shows the share Job Seeker takes within the D group.

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Year	Job Seeker	all of the D group	Share of family
2009	1	107,492	0.0
2010	4	125,674	0.0
2011	1,271	123,072	1.0
2012	3,147	105,912	3.0
2013	4,335	106,745	4.1
2014	4,738	111,537	4.2
2015	5,251	120,257	4.4
2016	5,585	135,996	4.1
2017	6,121	151,887	4.0
2018	6,274	176,863	3.5
2019	5,412	194,874	2.8
2020	7,625	168,845	4.5
2021	8,364	178,836	4.7
2022	11,261	217,267	5.2
2023	14,942	250,374	6.0
2024	18,212	291,006	6.3
2025	21,933	341,450	6.4

Table 3.By nationality Job Seeker top 10 countries, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Job Seeker	Within nationality
1	Vietnam	10,218	46.6	3.5
2	China	3,369	15.4	1.5
3	Uzbekistan	2,075	9.5	3.0
4	Mongolia	1,819	8.3	4.3
5	Myanmar	449	2.0	0.8
6	Nepal	386	1.8	0.4
7	Bangladesh	294	1.3	0.9
8	Indonesia	259	1.2	0.4
9	Japan	206	0.9	0.7
10	Sri Lanka	176	0.8	0.5
11	Other countries (128)	2,682	12.2	-

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

The within-nationality column is the share of that country's registered foreigners who hold Job Seeker.

Table 4.Job Seeker top 10 districts, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	District	Job Seeker	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Dongdaemun-gu	936	4.5
2	Seoul Gwanak-gu	900	4.5
3	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongsan-si	814	3.6
4	Seoul Gwangjin-gu	744	4.1
5	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	623	3.7
6	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	524	3.5
7	Daegu Dalseo-gu	513	3.7
8	Gwangju Gwangsan-gu	459	2.8
9	Chungcheongnam-do Cheonan-si Seobuk-gu	459	2.6
10	Seoul Jongno-gu	433	3.7

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

Note: In the district file, Job Seeker totals 21,933, the same as the nationwide count.

Table 5.Composition of statuses within the D group, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Status	Persons	Within group
Student(D2)	219,127	64.2
General Trainee(D4)	85,238	25.0
Job Seeker(D10)	21,933	6.4
Corporate Investment(D8)	8,518	2.5
Trade Management(D9)	2,650	0.8
Religious Worker(D6)	1,778	0.5
Intra-company Transferee(D7)	1,089	0.3
Industrial Trainee(D3)	931	0.3
Journalism(D5)	128	0.0
Culture & Arts(D1)	58	0.0

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy (registered foreigners by status of stay).

Note: the teal bar is the status you selected. Selecting a status outside a family shows that status alone.

Figure 2.By province, Job Seeker, 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 district and status of stay), summed to the province level.

Note: The map shades the 17 provinces, and the same values are also held for the 250 districts.

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Province	Job Seeker	Share of national
Seoul	7,565	34.5
Gyeonggi-do	3,513	16.0
Gyeongsangbuk-do	1,378	6.3
Busan	1,243	5.7
Chungcheongnam-do	1,089	5.0
Jeollabuk-do	1,012	4.6
Daegu	1,009	4.6
Gyeongsangnam-do	850	3.9
Gwangju	833	3.8
Incheon	803	3.7
Daejeon	789	3.6
Jeollanam-do	447	2.0
Chungcheongbuk-do	398	1.8
Ulsan	384	1.8
Gangwon-do	334	1.5
Jeju-do	231	1.1
Sejong	55	0.3