KIRD Korea Immigration Regional Dashboard 한국어

National statistics

2025, registered foreigners numbered 1,604,920 persons, and staying foreigners including short-term stays came to 2,783,247 people. 2006 631,219 to 2.5-fold. Against the resident-registration population this is 3.14%. 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 35.4% and South Asia 12%, and the three together come to 85%. 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. 2025: ethnic enclaves, meaning district and nationality pairs with a location quotient of 2 or more, 30% or more of local foreigners and 200 people or more, are counted in 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 64% to 35.4%. Diversity of nationality composition rose from 1.72 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 54.1%. Ethnic enclaves went from 27 in 2008 to 58 in 2025.

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.

Your district report

District 250 districts each have a district report.

Choose region
Table 1.Counts by population definitionUnit: persons
CategoryPersonsYearPopulation countedSource

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.

Figure 1.Registered foreigners and staying foreigners, 2006–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy each year.

View as table
YearRegistered foreignersStaying foreigners
ContentsMain sections
Table 2.Top 10 nationalities of registered foreigners, 2025Unit: persons, %
RankNationalityRegistered foreignersShareContinent

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook (registered foreigners by nationality).

Note: Shares divide by all registered foreigners in the year (1,604,920 in 2025). People with no nationality recorded (195 in 2025, stateless and others) are not in the table.

Figure 2.Trend for the top five nationalities, 2008–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

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.

View as table
Year
Table 3.Registered foreigners by continent of origin, 2025Unit: persons, %
ContinentRegistered foreignersShare

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%.

Table 4.Registered foreigners by status family, 2025Unit: persons, %
FamilyRegistered foreignersShare

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

Note: In 2025 the six families sum to 1,604,920, exactly the overall total.

Figure 3.Composition by continent of origin, 2008–2025Unit: %

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.

View as table
Year
Table 5.Top 20 languages by estimated demand, 2025Unit: persons, %
RankLanguageEstimated countShare

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.

Figure 4.Foreign share and Shannon diversity, 2008–2025Unit: %, index
Indicators

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. The vertical scale starts at the range of the values instead of at 0.

View as table
YearForeign shareShannon diversity (H)Evenness
Figure 5.Foreigners without status over time, 2014–2025Unit: 10,000 persons

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.

View as table
YearTotalMaleFemale
Figure 6.Ethnic enclaves and spatial indicators, 2008–2025Unit: count
Indicators

Source: National indicators calculated from the open dataset.

Note: An ethnic enclave is a district and nationality pair where the nationality holds 30% or more of the foreigners there, the location quotient (LQ) is 2 or more, and it numbers 200 people or more. 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).

View as table
YearEthnic enclavesMoran's IMultigroup segregation index
Figure 7.Residential segregation trajectories by region of origin, 2014–2025Unit: index
Indicators

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.

View as table
Year

District index

Figure 8.Foreign share by province, 2025Unit: %

Foreign share

    Note: The boundaries are simplified shapes for display. Values are calculated as province totals.

    View as table
    Province Foreign shareRegistered foreignersBand

    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.

    Figure 9.Settlement rate indicators, 2006–2024Unit: %

    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.

    View as table
    YearSettlement rateLabor relianceMarriage dependenceStudy dependence