KIRD Korea Immigration Regional Dashboard

Data profilesSeptember 2026

Foreign Residents in South Korea's Provinces

Profiles of the foreign-resident population of each of South Korea’s seventeen provinces and metropolitan cities. Each profile covers the size of the population over time against the Korean population, nationalities, residence statuses, districts and population-decline areas, international students and their universities, the industries that employ foreign workers, provincial policy and service organizations.

Unless another source is named, figures come from the Korea Immigration Regional Dashboard (KIRD) dataset, built from the Ministry of Justice immigration yearbooks and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety foreign-resident statistics for 2006 to 2024 and openly deposited at https://doi.org/10.3886/E249944V1.

Download all profiles as one PDF (160 pages)

Spotlights by province

Ordered by the number of registered foreigners in 2024.

Gyeonggi Province467,398 registered foreigners in 2024Seoul265,544 registered foreigners in 2024South Gyeongsang Province102,333 registered foreigners in 2024South Chungcheong Province96,687 registered foreigners in 2024Incheon89,129 registered foreigners in 2024North Gyeongsang Province76,768 registered foreigners in 2024South Jeolla Province57,189 registered foreigners in 2024North Chungcheong Province56,301 registered foreigners in 2024Busan55,805 registered foreigners in 2024Jeonbuk State43,795 registered foreigners in 2024Daegu36,710 registered foreigners in 2024Jeju27,990 registered foreigners in 2024Ulsan27,642 registered foreigners in 2024Gwangju26,557 registered foreigners in 2024Daejeon26,249 registered foreigners in 2024Gangwon State26,074 registered foreigners in 2024Sejong6,182 registered foreigners in 2024