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National statistics

In 2025 registered foreigners numbered 1,604,920, 2.5 times the 631,219 of 2006 and 3.14% of the resident-registration population. Staying foreigners, which include short-term stays, numbered 2,783,247. People staying without a status of stay were counted at 357,598 in 2025. Foreign residents as counted by MOIS numbered 2,583,626 in 2024, and that count includes people who acquired Republic of Korea nationality and their children.

Registered foreigners come from 192 countries. By continent of origin, Southeast Asia is 37.5%, East Asia is 35.4%, and South Asia is 12%, and the three together are 85%. Measured on the nationality composition, Shannon diversity (H) is 2.61 nationally and 2.25 on average across districts. Nationality composition is more concentrated within each district, so the average is below the national value. Spatial autocorrelation of the foreign share gives a Moran's I of 0.18, and districts with high shares neighbor one another. In 2025, ethnic enclaves, that is district and nationality pairs with a location quotient of 2 or more, 30% or more of local foreigners and 200 people or more, number 58. Formulas and limits for the indicators are given under Indicators and scope in Data and about.

The share of East Asia among continents of origin moved from 64% in 2008 to 35.4%, diversity of the nationality composition rose from 1.72 to 2.61, and the district average rose from 1.68 to 2.25. The share living in the Seoul metropolitan area also moved from 65.6% to 54.1%. Ethnic enclaves increased 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.

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Table 1.Counts by population definitionUnit: persons

Category	Persons	Year	Population counted	Source
Registered foreigners	1,604,920	2025	People staying more than 90 days who have completed foreigner registration	MOJ Statistical Yearbook
Staying foreigners	2,783,247	2025	All foreigners staying in Korea, including short-term stays	MOJ Statistical Yearbook
Foreigners without status	357,598	2025	People counted as staying without a status of stay	MOJ Statistical Yearbook
Foreign residents	2,583,626	2024	A broader definition that includes people who acquired Korean nationality and their children	MOIS Status of Foreign Residents

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

Year	Registered foreigners	Staying foreigners
2006	631,219	910,149
2010	918,917	1,261,415
2015	1,143,087	1,899,519
2020	1,145,540	2,036,075
2025	1,604,920	2,783,247

ContentsMain sections

Table 2.Top 10 nationalities of registered foreigners, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Registered foreigners	Share	Continent
1	Vietnam	293,907	18.3	Southeast Asia
2	Korean-Chinese	251,037	15.6	East Asia
3	China	226,628	14.1	East Asia
4	Nepal	89,521	5.6	South Asia
5	Uzbekistan	69,317	4.3	Central Asia
6	Cambodia	65,220	4.1	Southeast Asia
7	Indonesia	62,021	3.9	Southeast Asia
8	Myanmar	58,016	3.6	Southeast Asia
9	Philippines	54,866	3.4	Southeast Asia
10	Thailand	45,892	2.9	Southeast Asia
	Other 182 countries	388,300	24.2

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
2008	79,848	362,920	121,754	5,873	14,981
2009	86,166	363,087	125,564	7,371	15,868
2010	98,225	366,154	139,261	9,208	20,766
2011	110,564	389,398	147,301	12,603	24,380
2012	114,211	322,861	151,945	17,824	28,022
2013	113,843	329,835	161,098	20,746	30,699
2014	122,571	375,572	171,174	25,493	34,710
2015	128,042	380,091	187,934	29,189	36,945
2016	137,769	341,863	207,259	33,060	42,106
2017	151,385	318,768	208,343	35,426	47,722
2018	170,707	345,318	207,777	38,862	52,585
2019	187,334	332,525	208,081	40,933	56,237
2020	181,415	286,933	178,910	38,527	48,371
2021	178,928	253,533	170,852	35,447	44,470
2022	196,883	237,869	181,571	44,755	49,149
2023	227,930	242,032	205,502	60,663	55,239
2024	261,581	246,988	218,893	72,151	61,733
2025	293,907	251,037	226,628	89,521	69,317

Table 3.Registered foreigners by continent of origin, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Continent	Registered foreigners	Share
Southeast Asia	602,559	37.5
East Asia	568,673	35.4
South Asia	193,031	12.0
Central Asia	103,943	6.5
Europe	48,565	3.0
North America	41,629	2.6
Africa	24,473	1.5
West Asia	11,391	0.7
Latin America	5,017	0.3
Oceania	2,877	0.2
Other	2,567	0.2

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, %

Year 2025

Family	Registered foreigners	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).

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
2008	22.0	64.0	4.7	2.3	1.7	4.3
2009	22.2	63.2	4.7	2.4	1.8	4.5
2010	22.9	61.9	5.3	2.8	1.8	3.9
2011	23.3	61.2	5.8	3.0	1.8	3.4
2012	25.0	57.8	6.8	3.6	2.1	3.2
2013	26.2	56.3	7.0	3.6	2.2	3.0
2014	26.4	55.9	7.2	3.7	2.2	2.8
2015	26.8	55.2	7.4	3.8	2.1	2.6
2016	27.8	52.9	7.9	4.5	2.2	2.5
2017	28.9	50.8	8.0	5.3	2.2	2.5
2018	29.2	50.0	7.9	5.9	2.4	2.3
2019	30.1	48.1	8.0	6.4	2.6	2.4
2020	31.3	46.6	8.2	6.0	2.6	2.6
2021	32.1	45.0	8.1	6.0	2.9	3.0
2022	33.6	41.5	9.2	6.3	3.3	3.0
2023	35.1	39.1	10.4	6.4	3.3	2.7
2024	36.6	37.0	11.1	6.4	3.2	2.6
2025	37.5	35.4	12.0	6.5	3.0	2.6

Table 5.Top 20 languages by estimated demand, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Language	Estimated count	Share
1	Vietnamese	251,593	18.6
2	Chinese	236,664	17.5
3	Khmer	66,639	4.9
4	Uzbek	51,679	3.8
5	Tagalog/Filipino	48,182	3.6
6	Nepali	46,747	3.5
7	Indonesian	43,663	3.2
8	Thai	41,998	3.1
9	English	41,682	3.1
10	Russian	38,605	2.9
11	Burmese	37,185	2.7
12	Mongolian	36,852	2.7
13	Japanese	28,844	2.1
14	Bengali	27,943	2.1
15	Sinhala	25,506	1.9
16	Hindi	20,760	1.5
17	Kazakh	17,645	1.3
18	Cantonese	17,309	1.3
19	Arabic	11,847	0.9
	Tamil	10,979	0.8

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.

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Year	Foreign share	Shannon diversity (H)	Evenness
2008	1.72	1.715	0.572
2009	1.75	2.136	0.713
2010	1.82	2.173	0.725
2011	1.94	2.181	0.728
2012	1.83	2.286	0.763
2013	1.93	2.322	0.775
2014	2.13	2.310	0.771
2015	2.22	2.325	0.776
2016	2.25	2.381	0.795
2017	2.26	2.421	0.808
2018	2.41	2.420	0.808
2019	2.45	2.445	0.816
2020	2.21	2.464	0.823
2021	2.12	2.491	0.832
2022	2.31	2.552	0.852
2023	2.63	2.586	0.863
2024	2.91	2.604	0.869
2025	3.14	2.607	0.870

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

Year	Total	Male	Female
2014	208,778	139,251	69,527
2015	214,168	142,338	71,830
2016	208,971	139,339	69,632
2017	251,041	165,421	85,620
2018	355,126	224,644	130,482
2019	390,281	242,425	147,856
2020	392,196	242,052	150,144
2021	388,700	243,540	145,160
2022	411,270	257,555	153,715
2023	423,675	264,598	159,077
2024	397,522	250,236	147,286
2025	357,598	227,113	130,485

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).

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Year	Ethnic enclaves	Moran's I	Multigroup segregation index
2008	27	0.2849	-
2009	40	0.2759	0.0808
2010	41	0.2730	0.0831
2011	39	0.2648	0.0855
2012	40	0.2499	0.0817
2013	37	0.2555	0.0842
2014	35	0.2576	0.0884
2015	37	0.2513	0.0889
2016	38	0.2625	0.0875
2017	45	0.2803	0.0865
2018	54	0.2763	0.0883
2019	50	0.2676	0.0865
2020	51	0.2653	0.0826
2021	49	0.2655	0.0793
2022	48	0.2475	0.0790
2023	53	0.2069	0.0810
2024	54	0.1875	0.0811
2025	58	0.1835	0.0808

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
2014	0.375	0.380	0.466	0.519	0.485	0.335
2015	0.368	0.387	0.457	0.522	0.477	0.356
2016	0.355	0.390	0.452	0.532	0.454	0.366
2017	0.341	0.392	0.439	0.531	0.438	0.377
2018	0.331	0.402	0.436	0.524	0.432	0.385
2019	0.323	0.401	0.432	0.520	0.424	0.392
2020	0.316	0.399	0.430	0.517	0.409	0.398
2021	0.311	0.389	0.419	0.500	0.407	0.418
2022	0.313	0.386	0.426	0.491	0.416	0.440
2023	0.325	0.386	0.436	0.491	0.404	0.457
2024	0.326	0.386	0.433	0.478	0.394	0.476
2025	0.325	0.383	0.421	0.463	0.385	0.494

District index

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

Year 2025

Foreign share

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

View as table

Province	Foreign share	Registered foreigners	Band
Chungcheongnam-do	5.00	106,749	4 or more
Jeju-do	4.29	28,508	4 or more
Chungcheongbuk-do	3.90	62,213	3–4
Jeollanam-do	3.69	65,698	3–4
Gyeonggi-do	3.59	492,819	3–4
Gyeongsangnam-do	3.53	113,189	3–4
Gyeongsangbuk-do	3.51	88,013	3–4
Incheon	3.11	95,046	3–4
Seoul	3.01	279,629	3–4
Jeollabuk-do	2.85	49,077	2–3
Ulsan	2.76	30,175	2–3
Gwangju	2.04	28,421	2–3
Daejeon	1.97	28,364	Under 2
Gangwon-do	1.96	29,495	Under 2
Busan	1.88	60,929	Under 2
Daegu	1.70	40,024	Under 2
Sejong	1.68	6,571	Under 2

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.

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Year	Settlement rate	Labor reliance	Marriage dependence	Study dependence
2006	12.07	53.57	19.91	-
2007	13.60	41.24	14.35	-
2008	13.86	56.64	13.60	7.59
2009	16.39	61.93	13.78	8.56
2010	19.17	60.43	13.78	8.95
2011	20.73	54.96	14.39	8.87
2012	20.72	52.67	13.19	7.96
2013	22.48	46.54	13.47	7.57
2014	22.32	44.29	12.58	6.72
2015	21.00	44.33	10.97	6.23
2016	19.89	38.34	11.41	6.85
2017	20.52	33.61	10.99	8.00
2018	19.62	32.00	10.21	8.73
2019	19.75	28.98	9.86	9.11
2020	21.37	26.92	10.36	8.52
2021	22.70	24.07	10.69	9.60
2022	22.40	23.17	10.10	10.88
2023	21.32	24.39	9.35	10.73
2024	20.93	24.66	9.42	11.48