Vietnam Just Became Korea's Top Source of New Arrivals — A Map Drawn by 98,000 People
In 2025, 98,000 Vietnamese nationals entered Korea, more than any other nationality for the first time in 25 years. Here is where that number lands: 107,807 students, roughly 149,000 workers, and the cities of Ansan, Hwaseong and Siheung.
For twenty-five years, the first name on any list of foreigners in Korea was China. The 2025 figures moved that name.
Of the 428,000 foreign nationals who entered Korea last year, 98,000 held Vietnamese passports — more than any other nationality. Chinese nationals numbered 94,000. It is the first time Vietnam has led since Korea began compiling international migration statistics in 2000.
This piece maps where that number actually lands: which cities, which industries, which stage of life.
At a glance
| Item | Figure | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top nationality among arrivals | Vietnam 98,000 (China 94,000) | 2025 | National Data Agency |
| Purpose of Vietnamese arrivals | Work 49.0% · Study 31.1% · Residence/marriage 16.9% | 2025 | National Data Agency |
| Vietnamese residents in Korea | 305,936 — 2nd overall, 11.5% | Dec 2024 | Ministry of Justice |
| Share of registered foreigners | 18.4% (behind China's 29.8%) | Nov 2025 | Ministry of Justice |
| Vietnamese students | 107,807 of 305,329 international students | Aug 2025 | Ministry of Education tally |
| Vietnamese workers | ~149,000 — 2nd among foreign labour | May 2025 | Vietnamese labour authorities |
| Marriage migrants | Vietnam 44,289 (behind China's 60,655) | Jun 2026 | Ministry of Justice |
| Net foreign inflow | 50,000 (down from 98,000) | 2025 | National Data Agency |
The last row runs against the seven above it. Vietnam became the country sending the most people while Korea's total net foreign inflow fell by roughly half, from 98,000 to 50,000. The rank did not flip because Vietnamese arrivals exploded; it flipped because arrivals from elsewhere shrank faster. A table gives you the order. It does not tell you what the order is made of.
The rank that flipped is arrivals, not residents
Korea keeps two separate counts, and they currently disagree about who is first.
One counts people who are here. At the end of December 2024, Chinese nationals numbered 958,959, or 36.2% of the 2,650,783 foreign residents in the country. Vietnamese nationals numbered 305,936, or 11.5%. First place was more than three times second place.
The other counts people who arrived that year, and there the order reverses: 98,000 Vietnamese against 94,000 Chinese in 2025. Much of the Chinese decline comes from ethnic-Korean Chinese entering on overseas-Korean and working-visit status, a channel built a generation ago that is now narrowing. Another channel filled the gap.
Stock changes slowly. Flow changes first.
That lag is why perception and statistics keep missing each other. The signage in Seoul's Daerim-dong is still largely Chinese, and if that is all you look at, nothing has changed. The places that changed are university lecture halls and the industrial belt south of Seoul.
107,807 students means an entire cohort moved
Korea counted 305,329 international students in August 2025. The government's target of 300,000 by 2027, set in 2023, arrived two years early. The figure was around 207,000 in mid-2023, so it grew 47% in two years.
Within that total, Vietnam accounts for 107,807 and China for 86,179. Two countries make up roughly 64% of every international student in the country. Put another way, more than one in three international students you meet on a Korean campus is Vietnamese.
Composition matters more than size here. International students split between degree programmes and language courses, and about two thirds are in degree programmes. Language courses run one or two years; a degree runs four or more. These 107,807 people are not passing through — they are spending their twenties in Korea.
Three things had to line up for this. Korean tuition runs at roughly a third of American or Japanese levels. Post-graduation work routes exist. And the country was already familiar from a decade of television and music. Remove any one of the three and the number does not reach six figures.
149,000 workers sit on a manufacturing map
As of May 2025, about 149,000 Vietnamese nationals were working in Korea, second only to ethnic-Korean Chinese workers at roughly 341,000 and well ahead of Chinese nationals at about 54,000. They concentrate in manufacturing and assembly, agriculture and fisheries, and construction.
Where they live shows up directly in the registered-foreigner map. In November 2025 Korea counted 1,606,633 registered foreign residents, 54.0% of them in the capital region.
| Rank | City | Registered foreigners |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ansan, Gyeonggi | 54,989 |
| 2 | Hwaseong, Gyeonggi | 54,584 |
| 3 | Siheung, Gyeonggi | 42,158 |
| 4 | Suwon, Gyeonggi | 40,806 |
| 5 | Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi | 35,893 |
| 6 | Bucheon, Gyeonggi | 31,815 |
| — | By nationality | China 29.8% · Vietnam 18.4% · Nepal 5.5% · Uzbekistan 4.3% · Cambodia 4.1% |
But those six cities barely overlap with Korea's tourist map. Myeongdong is not on this list. Neither is Hongdae. The Korea you visit and the Korea you live in are physically different places, which is why two people from the same country can hold completely different mental maps of it. Someone shopping in Ansan's Wongok-dong and someone queueing for a Seongsu pop-up are not using the same city.
Workplace rules diverge here too. A factory day runs on labour law and company custom at the same time, and the sharpest gap between the two is the company dinner. On whether you can decline one, Korean law already gives a different answer than the culture does.
Money does not move in one direction only
Remittances from Vietnamese labour abroad run at roughly USD 3–3.5 billion a year, and Korea sits alongside Japan and Taiwan as a main origin. Ho Chi Minh City alone received USD 10.34 billion in total remittances in 2025, with Asia accounting for 48.9% of it.
Money travels the other way as well. That side of the ledger turned strange last year.
Korea exported USD 11.4 billion in cosmetics in 2025, up 12.3%, reaching 202 countries against 172 the year before. Shipments to Vietnam came to USD 477 million — down 9.9%. Vietnam held its place near fifth, but it was the only market near the top moving backwards.
Falling demand is an unlikely explanation. Customs figures count formally imported goods, so the gap describes paperwork, not popularity. If you want to know which route the bottle in your hand travelled, five lines on the label answer instead of the seller. If you buy in Korea directly, start with what foreign shoppers actually put in the basket.
What this means where you are
| Where you read this | What the numbers mean |
|---|---|
| Vietnam | Korea is now a labour destination and a study destination at the same time — work at 49.0% and study at 31.1% are nearly the same size. Statistically, Vietnam is also the country most likely to have a family member currently in Korea |
| Philippines, Cambodia, Nepal | Already high in the registered-foreigner mix at 5.5% and 4.1%. Study share is lower, so residence routes cluster around employment, and the geography clusters harder around industrial cities |
| Thailand, Indonesia | Short visits outnumber long stays, so this map barely applies. The Korea encountered as a visitor sits in Seoul and Busan, with almost no overlap with the six cities above |
| China | Still first by residents, but second by new arrivals for the first time in 25 years. Overseas-Korean and working-visit routes narrowed, and the average age of the community is drifting upward |
| English-speaking countries | Barely visible in this table. Teachers and corporate transferees are a small absolute number concentrated in Seoul. Imagining Korea's foreign population through an English-speaking lens misses the actual structure |
The map is still moving. Net inflow fell to 50,000 because departures rose too — 378,000 people left in 2025, up 7.1%. Where the people who arrived last year will be in five years is not written anywhere in this table yet.
Read next
- How to check whether Korean cosmetics are genuine — verifying the route by label and paperwork
- Why Korean company dinners are hard to refuse — the sharpest friction point at work
- Foreigners now generate 28% of Olive Young's sales — the visitor's version of this map
- How the Southeast Asian K-pop goods market moves — money running the other way in the same region
- How Korean convenience stores handle foreign customers — the first door most arrivals walk through
Sources
- Korea.kr — 2025 International Migration Statistics (Korean)
- Newsis — Vietnam overtakes China as top arrival nationality (Korean)
- Kyeonggi Ilbo — Registered foreigners pass 1.6 million; Ansan and Hwaseong lead (Korean)
- ASEAN Express — Foreign residents in Korea by nationality (Korean)
- Tuoi Tre / NLD — Vietnamese workers in Korea pass 140,000 (Vietnamese)
- Inside Vina — One in three international students in Korea is Vietnamese (Korean)