Corporate Investment

The status code is D8, and it covers Management, administration or production technology work at a foreign-invested company (investment of 100 million won or more).

People registered under the Corporate Investment (D8) status number 8,518, which is 0.5% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 5,866 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is an increase of about 45.2%. The largest nationalities are China at 24.7%, Japan at 18.2%, and Vietnam at 5.3%. They are found in 206 districts, and the largest counts are Yeonsu-gu with 939, Yongsan-gu with 665, and Hwaseong-si with 328.

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	Corporate Investment	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	8,518	1,604,920	0.5% of the total
Nationalities counted	111	192	57.8% of the total
Districts of residence	206	250	82.4% of the total

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

Corporate Investment ranks #4 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 Corporate Investment falls under.

Figure 1.Corporate Investment 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 Corporate Investment takes within the D group.

View as table

Year	Corporate Investment	all of the D group	Share of family
2006	7,184	113,288	6.3
2007	7,992	96,970	8.2
2008	8,251	104,091	7.9
2009	7,812	107,492	7.3
2010	7,482	125,674	6.0
2011	7,325	123,072	6.0
2012	7,049	105,912	6.7
2013	5,978	106,745	5.6
2014	5,967	111,537	5.3
2015	5,866	120,257	4.9
2016	5,951	135,996	4.4
2017	5,903	151,887	3.9
2018	5,853	176,863	3.3
2019	5,875	194,874	3.0
2020	5,499	168,845	3.3
2021	5,887	178,836	3.3
2022	6,764	217,267	3.1
2023	7,528	250,374	3.0
2024	8,321	291,006	2.9
2025	8,518	341,450	2.5

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Corporate Investment	Within nationality
1	China	2,106	24.7	0.9
2	Japan	1,554	18.2	5.3
3	Vietnam	454	5.3	0.2
4	Pakistan	404	4.7	2.3
5	United States	295	3.5	0.8
6	Kyrgyzstan	284	3.3	3.1
7	India	224	2.6	1.4
8	France	182	2.1	3.3
9	Libya	176	2.1	21.2
10	Russia	165	1.9	0.7
11	Other countries (101)	2,674	31.4	-

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 Corporate Investment.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Corporate Investment	Share of local foreigners
1	Incheon Yeonsu-gu	939	4.9
2	Seoul Yongsan-gu	665	5.1
3	Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si	328	0.6
4	Seoul Gangnam-gu	311	5.0
5	Seoul Mapo-gu	299	2.5
6	Seoul Jung-gu	274	2.6
7	Seoul Seocho-gu	262	5.4
8	Gyeonggi-do Pyeongtaek-si	169	0.5
9	Gyeonggi-do Seongnam-si Bundang-gu	160	5.2
10	Jeollanam-do Gwangyang-si	158	6.7

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

Note: In the district file, Corporate Investment totals 8,518, 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, Corporate Investment, 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	Corporate Investment	Share of national
Seoul	3,112	36.5
Gyeonggi-do	1,837	21.6
Incheon	1,438	16.9
Busan	292	3.4
Jeollanam-do	265	3.1
Gyeongsangnam-do	246	2.9
Chungcheongnam-do	239	2.8
Chungcheongbuk-do	238	2.8
Gyeongsangbuk-do	223	2.6
Daegu	163	1.9
Jeollabuk-do	150	1.8
Jeju-do	91	1.1
Ulsan	62	0.7
Gangwon-do	60	0.7
Daejeon	46	0.5
Gwangju	45	0.5
Sejong	11	0.1