Foreign workers wearing traditional Vietnamese conical hats harvest potatoes in a rural village in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, July 23, 2025. Yonhap
The share of foreign residents in Korea's population exceeded 4 percent for the first time in 2025, government data showed Tuesday, as growth in the foreign population offset a decline in Korean nationals and kept the country's overall population from shrinking.
According to the annual census released by the Ministry of Data and Statistics, the number of foreign residents stood at 2.11 million as of November 2025, up 66,000, or 3.2 percent, from a year earlier.
They accounted for 4.1 percent of Korea's total population of 51.82 million. Their share has risen steadily from 3.2 percent in 2021 to 3.4 percent in 2022, 3.7 percent in 2023 and 3.9 percent in 2024.
The figures cover registered foreign residents who have stayed in Korea for more than three months.
