2025, registered foreigners numbered 1,604,725 persons, and staying foreigners including short-term stays came to 2,782,964 people. 2006 632,510 to 2.5-fold. Against the resident-registration population this is 3.13%. In 2025 357,598 people were counted as staying without a status of stay. MOIS counted foreign residents in 2024 2,583,626, and this includes people who have acquired Korean nationality and their children.
Registered foreigners come from 192 countries. By continent of origin, Southeast Asia accounts for 37.5%, East Asia 34.4% and South Asia 12%, and the three together come to 83.9%. Measured as the diversity of nationality composition, the national value is 2.61 and the district average is 2.25. Nationality composition inside districts is more concentrated, so the average sits below the national value. Spatial autocorrelation of the foreign share gives a Moran's I of 0.18, and districts with a high share neighbor one another. Districts where one nationality makes up 30% or more of local foreigners number 58 places. The formulas and the limits of the indicators are set out under Indicators and scope in Data and about.
The East Asian share of origin continents in 2008 61.4% to 34.4%. Diversity of nationality composition rose from 1.71 to 2.61, and the district mean from 1.68 to 2.25. The share living in the Seoul metropolitan area also went from 65.6% to 54%. The number of districts where one nationality accounts for 30% or more rose from 27 to 58.
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy 2006–2025 (registered foreigners, staying foreigners, foreigners without status), MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments 2024, MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics 2025
Shannon diversity and Moran's I were computed from the open dataset.
District 250 districts each have a district report.
| Category | Persons | Year | Population counted | Source |
|---|
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments.
Note: The four definitions contain or overlap one another and are not added together. Staying foreigners include registered foreigners, and foreign residents add people who have acquired Korean nationality and their children. The default definition on this site is registered foreigners.
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy each year.
| Year | Registered foreigners | Staying foreigners |
|---|
| Rank | Nationality | Registered foreigners | Share | Continent |
|---|
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by nationality).
Note: Shares are calculated on 1,604,725 registered foreigners, and the eleven rows sum to the total.
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook each year (registered foreigners by nationality).
Note: The five largest nationalities in 2025 were selected and traced back through earlier years. Korean Chinese is an item the yearbook counts separately from China.
| Year |
|---|
| Continent | Registered foreigners | Share |
|---|
Source: Open dataset continent classification applied to registered foreigners by nationality.
Note: The nationalities in Table 2 aggregated by continent of origin. The seven continent groups sum to 100%.
| Family | Registered foreigners | Share |
|---|
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by status of stay).
Note: The six families sum to 1,604,725, exactly the overall total. Figures by status are under By status of stay.
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook for each year (registered foreigners by nationality), grouped by continent.
Note: The share each continent holds among registered foreigners in that year. Table 3 is the composition in one year and this figure is the composition year by year.
| Year |
|---|
| Rank | Language | Estimated count | Share |
|---|
Source: An estimate that applies the first-language shares of Ethnologue first-language shares, with Korean excluded.
Note: Several first languages are spoken in one country, so the count splits into as many as 1,361 languages and the total does not equal the number of registered foreigners. It is used to set priorities for interpretation and translation.
Source: National indicators calculated from the open dataset.
Note: The foreign share is registered foreigners divided by the resident-registration population. Shannon diversity (H) measures how evenly nationalities are mixed, and evenness rescales H to a range of 0 to 1. The indices are calculated on a base reduced to the top 19 nationalities plus other. When Shannon diversity is selected, the chart shows the value for the country treated as one unit together with the mean of the 250 districts. The vertical scale starts at the range of the values instead of at 0.
| Year | Foreign share | Shannon diversity (H) | Evenness |
|---|
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook each year (foreigners without status).
Note: The count of people staying beyond their permitted period, which does not overlap with registered foreigners. Values by sex are under View as table.
| Year | Total | Male | Female |
|---|
Source: National indicators calculated from the open dataset.
Note: An ethnic enclave is a district where one nationality holds 30% or more of the foreigners there and the location quotient (LQ) is above 2. Spatial autocorrelation is how similar the foreign share is between neighboring districts (Moran's I), and the multigroup segregation index is how far nationality composition is separated across districts (Theil H).
| Year | Ethnic enclaves | Moran's I | Multigroup segregation index |
|---|
Source: Segregation indicators by region of origin, calculated from the open dataset.
Note: The index of dissimilarity (D) measures how differently people from that region are spread across districts compared with Koreans, and the isolation index is the probability of meeting someone from the same region. Only the six regions with the largest counts are drawn.
| Year |
|---|
Foreign share
Note: The boundaries are simplified shapes for display. Values are calculated as province totals.
| Province | Foreign share | Registered foreigners | Band |
|---|
Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by district), MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics.
Note: the list covers 250 districts, and the map groups the same measure into the 17 provinces. Support organization counts per district are in each regional report, and the total and its distribution are in Service map.
Source: MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments, Open dataset, indicators calculated from it.
Note: The settlement rate is the share of foreign residents (MOIS) made up of people who acquired Korean nationality and their children. Labor, marriage, and study reliance are the share each type holds among foreign residents (MOIS) who have not acquired Korean nationality. The national value is the mean of the province values weighted by the number of foreign residents (MOIS). Study reliance has been counted since 2010.
| Year | Settlement rate | Labor reliance | Marriage dependence | Study dependence |
|---|