Student

The status code is D2, and it covers Degree study at a junior college, university or graduate school, or specific research.

People registered under the Student (D2) status number 219,127, which is 13.7% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 66,155 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 231.2%. The largest nationalities are China at 33.1%, Vietnam at 25.7%, and Uzbekistan at 8.3%. They are found in 238 districts, and the largest counts are Dongdaemun-gu with 11,579, Gyeongsan-si with 11,325, and Seongbuk-gu with 7,920.

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	Student	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	219,127	1,604,920	13.7% of the total
Nationalities counted	176	192	91.7% of the total
Districts of residence	238	250	95.2% of the total

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

Student is the largest status 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 Student falls under.

Figure 1.Student and all of the D group, 2006–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year.

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

View as table

Year	Student	all of the D group	Share of family
2006	29,558	113,288	26.1
2007	41,348	96,970	42.6
2008	52,243	104,091	50.2
2009	62,112	107,492	57.8
2010	69,355	125,674	55.2
2011	67,839	123,072	55.1
2012	63,815	105,912	60.3
2013	60,270	106,745	56.5
2014	61,068	111,537	54.8
2015	66,155	120,257	55.0
2016	75,675	135,996	55.6
2017	86,504	151,887	57.0
2018	102,127	176,863	57.7
2019	117,415	194,874	60.3
2020	101,200	168,845	59.9
2021	110,279	178,836	61.7
2022	133,112	217,267	61.3
2023	151,483	250,374	60.5
2024	178,107	291,006	61.2
2025	219,127	341,450	64.2

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Student	Within nationality
1	China	72,531	33.1	32.0
2	Vietnam	56,395	25.7	19.2
3	Uzbekistan	18,242	8.3	26.3
4	Nepal	15,577	7.1	17.4
5	Mongolia	13,180	6.0	31.3
6	Myanmar	5,518	2.5	9.5
7	Bangladesh	3,688	1.7	11.4
8	Japan	2,912	1.3	9.9
9	Indonesia	2,240	1.0	3.6
10	Pakistan	2,118	1.0	12.2
11	Other countries (166)	26,721	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 Student.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Student	Share of local foreigners
1	Seoul Dongdaemun-gu	11,579	56.0
2	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongsan-si	11,325	50.7
3	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	7,920	53.0
4	Seoul Gwangjin-gu	7,875	43.9
5	Seoul Seodaemun-gu	7,668	46.0
6	Seoul Gwanak-gu	5,816	29.4
7	Busan Nam-gu	5,100	63.2
8	Seoul Jongno-gu	5,011	42.6
9	Seoul Dongjak-gu	4,227	34.2
10	Daejeon Dong-gu	4,038	53.1

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

Note: In the district file, Student totals 219,127, 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, Student, 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.

View as table

Province	Student	Share of national
Seoul	72,243	33.0
Gyeonggi-do	34,993	16.0
Busan	16,752	7.6
Gyeongsangbuk-do	16,324	7.4
Daejeon	10,528	4.8
Chungcheongnam-do	9,992	4.6
Jeollabuk-do	9,366	4.3
Chungcheongbuk-do	8,837	4.0
Gangwon-do	7,241	3.3
Daegu	7,110	3.2
Incheon	6,690	3.1
Gwangju	6,468	3.0
Gyeongsangnam-do	4,894	2.2
Jeollanam-do	4,232	1.9
Ulsan	1,266	0.6
Sejong	1,106	0.5
Jeju-do	1,085	0.5