Trade Management

The status code is D9, and it covers Foreign trade, importing industrial equipment, import and export transactions and similar business.

People registered under the Trade Management (D9) status number 2,650, which is 0.2% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 7,167 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is a decrease of about 63%. The largest nationalities are China at 18%, Mongolia at 8.3%, and Uzbekistan at 6.1%. They are found in 162 districts, and the largest counts are Geoje-si with 595, Dong-gu with 274, and Yeonsu-gu with 103.

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	Trade Management	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	2,650	1,604,920	0.2% of the total
Nationalities counted	88	192	45.8% of the total
Districts of residence	163	250	65.2% of the total

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

Trade Management ranks #5 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 Trade Management falls under.

Figure 1.Trade Management 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 Trade Management takes within the D group.

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Year	Trade Management	all of the D group	Share of family
2006	2,100	113,288	1.9
2007	2,393	96,970	2.5
2008	2,822	104,091	2.7
2009	3,193	107,492	3.0
2010	4,360	125,674	3.5
2011	4,422	123,072	3.6
2012	4,797	105,912	4.5
2013	8,168	106,745	7.7
2014	8,732	111,537	7.8
2015	7,167	120,257	6.0
2016	5,633	135,996	4.1
2017	2,942	151,887	1.9
2018	2,491	176,863	1.4
2019	2,320	194,874	1.2
2020	2,027	168,845	1.2
2021	1,994	178,836	1.1
2022	2,111	217,267	1.0
2023	2,473	250,374	1.0
2024	2,467	291,006	0.8
2025	2,650	341,450	0.8

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Trade Management	Within nationality
1	China	477	18.0	0.2
2	Mongolia	220	8.3	0.5
3	Uzbekistan	161	6.1	0.2
4	Vietnam	135	5.1	0.0
5	Brazil	133	5.0	8.6
6	India	130	4.9	0.8
7	Malaysia	116	4.4	2.1
8	Nigeria	103	3.9	3.9
9	France	95	3.6	1.7
10	Philippines	94	3.5	0.2
11	Other countries (78)	986	37.2	-

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 Trade Management.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Trade Management	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeongsangnam-do Geoje-si	595	3.6
2	Ulsan Dong-gu	274	2.5
3	Incheon Yeonsu-gu	103	0.5
4	Chungcheongnam-do Cheonan-si Seobuk-gu	86	0.5
5	Seoul Yongsan-gu	74	0.6
6	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gumi-si	61	0.8
7	Busan Gangseo-gu	43	0.6
8	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongsan-si	39	0.2
9	Seoul Jung-gu	37	0.3
10	Incheon Seo-gu	37	0.2

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

Note: In the district file, Trade Management totals 2,650, 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, Trade Management, 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	Trade Management	Share of national
Gyeongsangnam-do	655	24.7
Seoul	388	14.6
Gyeonggi-do	318	12.0
Ulsan	315	11.9
Incheon	230	8.7
Busan	162	6.1
Chungcheongnam-do	145	5.5
Jeollanam-do	131	4.9
Gyeongsangbuk-do	124	4.7
Chungcheongbuk-do	48	1.8
Daegu	40	1.5
Jeollabuk-do	35	1.3
Gwangju	19	0.7
Gangwon-do	16	0.6
Daejeon	14	0.5
Sejong	7	0.3
Jeju-do	3	0.1