KIRD Immigrant statistics in Korea 한국어

National map

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy 2025, MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics 2025, Open dataset, indicators calculated from it.

Note: The share is registered foreigners divided by the resident-registration population.

Table 1.Registered foreigners and share by province, 2025Unit: persons, %
RankProvinceShareRegistered foreignersResident-registration population

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics.

Figure 1.Registered foreign share by district, 2025Unit: %
Registered foreign share

    Click a district to open its report.

    Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics.

    Note: Share is registered foreigners divided by the resident-registration population. The bands are fixed on the 2025 district quintiles, so the same color means the same value in every year. Boundaries are Statistics Korea SGIS administrative boundaries and the base map is OpenStreetMap contributors and CARTO.

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    RankDistrictProvince
    Table 2.20 districts with the highest registered foreign share, 2025Unit: persons, %, index
    RankDistrictProvinceRegistered foreigners

    Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, open dataset.

    Note: The top 20 among the districts counted that year.

    Figure 2.District types, 2024Unit: type
    Classification
    Settlement type

      Click a district to open its report.

      Source: MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments, MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, indicators calculated from the open dataset.

      Note: The settlement type divides the labor, study, and marriage shares among foreign residents (MOIS) who have not acquired Korean nationality by the national benchmark (38%, 16%, 15%) and assigns the district to whichever of the three is largest and above 1. This grouping alone uses foreign residents (MOIS), so it counts a different population from Figure 1. The origin composition splits only the districts whose registered-foreigner share is above the national average for that year, according to whether East Asian origins exceed half; districts below the average stay in one group. Districts with fewer than 1,000 foreigners are left blank. Local clusters were identified with the local Moran's I, which finds areas where neighboring districts have a similar share.

      Figure 3.Settlement type composition over timeUnit: count

      Source: MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments, MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

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      Year
      Figure 4.Close-up of Seoul metropolitan area districts, 2025Unit: %

      Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, MOIS Resident Registration Population Statistics.

      Note: Districts in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi are shaded on the same color scale as Figure 1. The classes are quintiles of that year's values for all 250 districts. Selecting a district opens its district report.

      Figure 5.Foreign residents by administrative sub-district in the Seoul metropolitan area, 2024Unit: persons

      Source: MOIS Status of Foreign Residents in Local Governments (sub-district).

      Note: This map alone uses foreign residents (MOIS), so people who have acquired Korean nationality and their children are included, and the population counted differs from the registered foreigners in Figure 1 and Figure 4. Resident-registration population at the sub-district level is published only through 2015, so the map is shaded by counts instead of shares, and the classes are quintiles of that year's values for administrative sub-districts in the Seoul metropolitan area. Administrative sub-district boundaries are as of 2023, so areas split or merged after that are left blank.

      Figure 6.Foreigner share and continent diversity, 2025Unit: %, index

      Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, indicators computed from the open dataset.

      Note: The horizontal axis is the share of registered foreigners in the district's resident-registration population, and the vertical axis is diversity measured across continents of origin. A district with many foreigners still has a low vertical value when most of them come from one continent. Districts with fewer than 1,000 foreigners were excluded because the values are unstable. Dark teal marks southwestern Seoul and Ansan-si Danwon-gu, where Korean-Chinese residents are concentrated, and brown marks the four districts with the highest continent diversity. Click a point to open that district's report.

      Figure 7.Concentration in the Seoul metropolitan area over time, 2008–2025Unit: %

      Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

      Note: The share of all registered foreigners living in Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi. The vertical scale starts at the range of the values instead of at 0.

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      YearSeoul metropolitan areaNational