Visiting Employment

The status code is H2, and it covers Visiting employment, that is, ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet Union aged 25 or older, in simple manual work.

People registered under the Visiting Employment (H2) status number 81,082, which is 5.1% of all registered foreigners. Compared with 282,995 in 2015, 10 years earlier, that is a decrease of about 71.3%. The largest nationalities are Korean-Chinese at 87%, Uzbekistan at 7.4%, and Kazakhstan at 4.5%. They are found in 246 districts, and the largest counts are Ansan-si Danwon-gu with 6,678, Siheung-si with 6,354, and Guro-gu with 5,327.

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	Visiting Employment	All registered foreigners	Relative to total
People	81,082	1,604,920	5.1% of the total
Nationalities counted	10	192	5.2% of the total
Districts of residence	246	250	98.4% of the total

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

Visiting Employment is the largest status within the H 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 H group, the group Visiting Employment falls under.

Figure 1.Visiting Employment and all of the H group, 2007–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook, each year.

Putting the status and the group on one axis shows the share Visiting Employment takes within the H group.

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Year	Visiting Employment	all of the H group	Share of family
2007	223,450	223,782	99.9
2008	297,427	297,795	99.9
2009	304,801	305,110	99.9
2010	282,801	283,350	99.8
2011	300,554	301,514	99.7
2012	235,147	236,316	99.5
2013	235,182	236,668	99.4
2014	279,291	280,902	99.4
2015	282,995	284,580	99.4
2016	250,005	251,804	99.3
2017	225,455	227,639	99.0
2018	246,189	248,919	98.9
2019	223,513	226,461	98.7
2020	152,565	153,407	99.5
2021	123,432	123,692	99.8
2022	102,907	104,904	98.1
2023	101,434	104,980	96.6
2024	91,818	95,395	96.3
2025	81,082	84,971	95.4

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

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Within Visiting Employment	Within nationality
1	Korean-Chinese	70,569	87.0	28.1
2	Uzbekistan	5,994	7.4	8.6
3	Kazakhstan	3,631	4.5	18.1
4	Kyrgyzstan	526	0.6	5.7
5	Ukraine	282	0.3	10.9
6	Tajikistan	70	0.1	3.4
7	Korean-Russian	4	0.0	0.1
8	Turkmenistan	3	0.0	0.4
9	China	2	0.0	0.0
10	Moldova	1	0.0	1.5

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 Visiting Employment.

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

Year 2025

Rank	District	Visiting Employment	Share of local foreigners
1	Gyeonggi-do Ansan-si Danwon-gu	6,678	17.4
2	Gyeonggi-do Siheung-si	6,354	15.1
3	Seoul Guro-gu	5,327	21.8
4	Seoul Yeongdeungpo-gu	5,127	21.5
5	Seoul Geumcheon-gu	3,035	21.3
6	Gyeonggi-do Bucheon-si	2,784	8.8
7	Gyeonggi-do Suwon-si Paldal-gu	2,286	18.1
8	Gyeonggi-do Hwaseong-si	2,209	4.0
9	Gyeonggi-do Pyeongtaek-si	1,983	5.5
10	Chungcheongnam-do Asan-si	1,976	7.8

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

Note: In the district file, Visiting Employment totals 81,082, the same as the nationwide count.

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

Year 2025

Status		Persons	Within group
Visiting Employment(H2)		81,082	95.4
Working Holiday(H1)		3,889	4.6

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, Visiting Employment, 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	Visiting Employment	Share of national
Gyeonggi-do	38,307	47.2
Seoul	22,502	27.8
Incheon	5,244	6.5
Chungcheongnam-do	4,607	5.7
Chungcheongbuk-do	2,185	2.7
Gyeongsangnam-do	1,645	2.0
Gyeongsangbuk-do	1,524	1.9
Ulsan	955	1.2
Gwangju	738	0.9
Busan	533	0.7
Jeollabuk-do	523	0.6
Jeollanam-do	495	0.6
Daegu	475	0.6
Gangwon-do	393	0.5
Daejeon	383	0.5
Jeju-do	359	0.4
Sejong	214	0.3