English

Undocumented residence

In 2025, 357,598 people were staying in Korea without a status of stay. The largest group is the 125,925 people who entered under Visa waiver (B-1), 35.2% of the total, that is, people who entered without a visa and stayed beyond the permitted period. The peak year was 2023, with 423,675.

By nationality, Thailand is the largest group, with 115,851 people or 32.4% of the total.

By sex, 227,113 are men and 130,485 are women. By continent of origin, Asia accounts for 343,739 people, 96.1% of the total.

By length of overstay, 188,215 people (52.6%) have stayed more than 5 years beyond their permitted period, 49,962 of them more than 10 years.

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: the yearbook titles this table with a term that translates as illegal sojourners. This page says undocumented, because what is counted is a residence that is unregistered and not a finding about any person.

Note: the status is the one the person entered on or last held, not one they hold now. No district figures exist for any year, so this count does not enter the district reports.

Table 1.Undocumented residents by status on entry, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Status on entry	Persons	Share
1	Visa Exemption (B-1)	125,925	35.2
2	Short-term visit (C-3)	72,910	20.4
3	Non-professional Employment (E-9)	50,499	14.1
4	General trainee (D-4)	22,778	6.4
5	Tourist Transit (B-2)	20,097	5.6
6	Other status (G-1)	11,999	3.4
7	Student (D-2)	9,867	2.8
8	Crew employment (E-10)	9,558	2.7
9	Unclassified (SOFA / Treaty)	5,891	1.6
10	Seasonal work (E-8)	4,680	1.3

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: the status is the one the person entered on or last held, not one they hold now. The ten largest are shown.

Table 2.Undocumented residents by nationality, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Nationality	Persons	Share	Share of residents
1	Thailand	115,851	32.4	68.2
2	Vietnam	72,979	20.4	21.6
3	China	56,551	15.8	16.8
4	Mongolia	14,681	4.1	24.5
5	Philippines	13,594	3.8	18.3
6	Indonesia	13,367	3.7	17.4
7	Cambodia	10,331	2.9	15.2
8	Kazakhstan	9,015	2.5	21
9	Uzbekistan	7,375	2.1	7.2
10	Russia	6,531	1.8	21.1
11	Other	37,323	10.4

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, chapter 6, table 6-4; Korea Open Data Portal dataset 15112636.

Note: the yearbook carries only the ten largest nationalities and an Other row, so nationalities outside the ten cannot be read separately. Share of residents is the undocumented count as a share of all foreign residents of that nationality that year. With registered foreigners as the denominator Thailand reaches 491.8% in 2020, because much of the undocumented count is short-term arrivals who never registered.

Table 3.Undocumented residents by continent of origin, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Rank	Continent of origin	Persons	Share
1	Asia	343,739	96.1
2	Europe	7,015	2
3	Africa	3,239	0.9
4	North America	2,533	0.7
5	South America	838	0.2
6	Oceania	181	0.1
7	Other	53	0

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: this table groups every nationality into continents, while Table 2 lists only the ten largest. No district figures appear in any table of the yearbook's chapter 6. For 2014 the yearbook's own continent rows sum to 1 more than its own total, so the shares add to just over 100.0.

Table 4.Undocumented residents by length of overstay, 2025Unit: persons, %

Year 2025

Length of overstay	Persons	Share
6 months or less	15,797	4.4
Over 6 months to 1 year	16,398	4.6
Over 1 to 3 years	85,762	24
Over 3 to 5 years	51,426	14.4
Over 5 to 10 years	138,253	38.7
Over 10 years	49,962	14

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: the buckets do not overlap.

Table 5.Undocumented residents by age group, 2025Unit: persons, %

Age group	Persons	Share
19 or under	4,402	1.2
20-29	67,011	18.7
30-39	127,312	35.6
40-49	93,047	26.0
50-59	47,968	13.4
60 or over	17,858	5.0

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, chapter 6, table 6-3.

Note: the yearbook prints one year only, as of 31 December.

Table 6.Registered foreigners who fell out of status, 2021–2025Unit: persons, %

Year	Registered foreigners	Lawful stay	Undocumented	Undocumented share
2021	1,093,891	968,869	125,022	11.4
2022	1,189,585	1,051,572	138,013	11.6
2023	1,348,626	1,210,672	137,954	10.2
2024	1,488,353	1,353,773	134,580	9.0
2025	1,604,920	1,476,107	128,813	8.0

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy, chapter 6, table 6-5.

Note: this counts only people who registered as foreign residents and later fell out of status. It excludes those who never registered, so it is far smaller than the count in Figure 1.

Figure 1.Undocumented residents by year, 2014–2025Unit: persons

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: the peak was 423,675 in 2023 and the number has fallen since.

View as table

Year	Persons
2014	208,778
2015	214,168
2016	208,971
2017	251,041
2018	355,126
2019	390,281
2020	392,196
2021	388,700
2022	411,270
2023	423,675
2024	397,522
2025	357,598

Figure 2.Share undocumented, 2014–2025Unit: %

Source: MOJ Statistical Yearbook on Immigration and Foreign Policy.

Note: the share of all foreign residents is what the yearbook calls the unauthorized-residence rate.

View as table

Year	Undocumented	Staying foreigners	Registered foreigners	Share of residents	Share of registered
2014	208,778	1,797,618	1,091,531	11.6	19.1
2015	214,168	1,899,519	1,143,087	11.3	18.7
2016	208,971	2,049,441	1,161,677	10.2	18
2017	251,041	2,180,498	1,171,762	11.5	21.4
2018	355,126	2,367,607	1,246,626	15	28.5
2019	390,281	2,524,656	1,271,807	15.5	30.7
2020	392,196	2,036,075	1,145,540	19.3	34.2
2021	388,700	1,956,781	1,093,891	19.9	35.5
2022	411,270	2,245,912	1,189,585	18.3	34.6
2023	423,675	2,507,584	1,348,626	16.9	31.4
2024	397,522	2,650,783	1,488,353	15	26.7
2025	357,598	2,783,247	1,604,920	12.8	22.3