Professor

The status code is E1, and it covers Foreign professors at junior colleges and other higher education institutions.

People registered under the Professor (E1) status number 1,729, which is 0.1% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 2,605 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is a decrease of about 33.6%. The largest nationalities are United States at 23.5%, India at 17.8%, and Canada at 7.8%. They are found in 143 districts, and the largest counts are Gyeongsan-si with 169, Dong-gu with 116, and Yeonsu-gu with 109.

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	Professor	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	1,729	1,604,920	0.1% of the total
Nationalities counted	83	192	43.2% of the total
Districts of residence	143	250	57.2% of the total

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

Professor ranks #8 by size within the E 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 E group, the group Professor falls under.

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

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year.

Putting the status and the group on one axis shows the share Professor takes within the E group.

View as table

Year	Professor	all of the E group	Share of family
2006	1,140	257,316	0.4
2007	1,269	241,714	0.5
2008	1,575	242,056	0.7
2009	2,040	241,071	0.8
2010	2,255	266,374	0.8
2011	2,459	285,257	0.9
2012	2,620	282,942	0.9
2013	2,622	300,773	0.9
2014	2,657	326,296	0.8
2015	2,605	332,346	0.8
2016	2,499	335,438	0.7
2017	2,420	333,420	0.7
2018	2,336	336,198	0.7
2019	2,183	332,025	0.7
2020	2,045	291,414	0.7
2021	2,010	273,499	0.7
2022	2,005	322,080	0.6
2023	1,890	400,033	0.5
2024	1,801	455,307	0.4
2025	1,729	493,577	0.4

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Professor	Within nationality
1	United States	406	23.5	1.1
2	India	307	17.8	1.9
3	Canada	134	7.8	2.9
4	China	129	7.5	0.1
5	United Kingdom	70	4.0	1.3
6	Pakistan	67	3.9	0.4
7	Japan	60	3.5	0.2
8	Germany	58	3.4	1.8
9	Philippines	47	2.7	0.1
10	Vietnam	38	2.2	0.0
11	Other countries (73)	413	23.9	-

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 Professor.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Professor	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeongsangbuk-do Gyeongsan-si	169	0.8
2	Daejeon Dong-gu	116	1.5
3	Incheon Yeonsu-gu	109	0.6
4	Gyeonggi-do Seongnam-si Sujeong-gu	92	0.7
5	Seoul Yongsan-gu	58	0.4
6	Seoul Gwanak-gu	57	0.3
7	Seoul Dongdaemun-gu	47	0.2
8	Daegu Buk-gu	46	0.6
9	Seoul Seongbuk-gu	41	0.3
10	Seoul Mapo-gu	38	0.3

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

Note: In the district file, Professor totals 1,729, the same as the nationwide count.

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

Year 2025

Status	Persons	Within group
Non-professional Employment(E9)	336,713	68.2
Specially Designated Activities(E7)	81,723	16.6
Seasonal Worker(E8)	31,609	6.4
Crew Employment(E10)	20,920	4.2
Foreign Language Instructor(E2)	12,864	2.6
Arts & Entertainment(E6)	4,224	0.9
Researcher(E3)	3,365	0.7
Professor(E1)	1,729	0.4
Specialized Occupation(E5)	221	0.0
Technical Instructor(E4)	209	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, Professor, 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	Professor	Share of national
Seoul	478	27.6
Gyeonggi-do	308	17.8
Gyeongsangbuk-do	212	12.3
Daejeon	167	9.7
Incheon	124	7.2
Busan	110	6.4
Daegu	88	5.1
Chungcheongnam-do	54	3.1
Gwangju	35	2.0
Gangwon-do	30	1.7
Chungcheongbuk-do	26	1.5
Gyeongsangnam-do	23	1.3
Ulsan	19	1.1
Jeollanam-do	18	1.0
Jeollabuk-do	18	1.0
Sejong	11	0.6
Jeju-do	8	0.5