Religious Worker

The status code is D6, and it covers Religious workers sent by a foreign religious body, including missionaries.

People registered under the Religious Worker (D6) status number 1,778, which is 0.1% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 1,685 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 5.5%. The largest nationalities are United States at 24.8%, Vietnam at 11.8%, and Philippines at 11.8%. They are found in 193 districts, and the largest counts are Yongin-si Suji-gu with 145, Songpa-gu with 116, and Anseong-si with 95.

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	Religious Worker	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	1,778	1,604,920	0.1% of the total
Nationalities counted	79	192	41.1% of the total
Districts of residence	194	250	77.6% of the total

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

Religious Worker ranks #6 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 Religious Worker falls under.

Figure 1.Religious Worker 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 Religious Worker takes within the D group.

View as table

Year	Religious Worker	all of the D group	Share of family
2006	1,623	113,288	1.4
2007	1,763	96,970	1.8
2008	1,748	104,091	1.7
2009	1,592	107,492	1.5
2010	1,510	125,674	1.2
2011	1,540	123,072	1.3
2012	1,511	105,912	1.4
2013	1,734	106,745	1.6
2014	1,814	111,537	1.6
2015	1,685	120,257	1.4
2016	1,678	135,996	1.2
2017	1,679	151,887	1.1
2018	1,548	176,863	0.9
2019	1,523	194,874	0.8
2020	1,222	168,845	0.7
2021	1,318	178,836	0.7
2022	1,418	217,267	0.7
2023	1,436	250,374	0.6
2024	1,736	291,006	0.6
2025	1,778	341,450	0.5

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Religious Worker	Within nationality
1	United States	441	24.8	1.2
2	Vietnam	209	11.8	0.1
3	Philippines	209	11.8	0.4
4	Nepal	102	5.7	0.1
5	Myanmar	101	5.7	0.2
6	Indonesia	82	4.6	0.1
7	Sri Lanka	67	3.8	0.2
8	India	57	3.2	0.4
9	Japan	47	2.6	0.2
10	China	41	2.3	0.0
11	Other countries (69)	419	23.6	-

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 Religious Worker.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Religious Worker	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeonggi-do Yongin-si Suji-gu	145	4.4
2	Seoul Songpa-gu	116	1.8
3	Gyeonggi-do Anseong-si	95	0.6
4	Chungcheongnam-do Gongju-si	73	2.3
5	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	64	0.4
6	Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si	47	0.1
7	Seoul Yongsan-gu	47	0.4
8	Daegu Nam-gu	35	1.5
9	Jeollabuk-do Jeonju-si Wansan-gu	31	0.6
10	Jeju-do Jeju-si	30	0.2

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

Note: In the district file, Religious Worker totals 1,778, 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, Religious Worker, 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	Religious Worker	Share of national
Gyeonggi-do	506	28.5
Seoul	445	25.0
Chungcheongnam-do	124	7.0
Busan	104	5.8
Gyeongsangbuk-do	79	4.4
Gyeongsangnam-do	76	4.3
Jeollanam-do	65	3.7
Daegu	64	3.6
Incheon	64	3.6
Jeollabuk-do	46	2.6
Gwangju	44	2.5
Chungcheongbuk-do	40	2.2
Jeju-do	39	2.2
Gangwon-do	37	2.1
Ulsan	23	1.3
Daejeon	19	1.1
Sejong	3	0.2