Minorities in Korea

Minorities in North Korea include groups of repatriated Koreans, small religious communities, and migrants from neighboring China and Japan.

North Korea largely remains ethnically homogeneous with a small Chinese expatriate community and a few Japanese people.

Joseon diplomacy mainly involved the Sadae ("serving the great") policy toward Imperial China.

serving the great and relations with neighbor policy) was the Gyorin policy of amicable relations with neighbouring countries; however this did not result in significant influx of foreign persons but rather sporadic trade delegations and diplomatic missions: envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom were received by Taejo of Joseon in 1392, 1394 and 1397.

[9] They include groups of repatriated Koreans, small religious communities, and migrants from neighboring China and Japan.

The historical Jaegaseung ethnic group of descendants of Jurchen people used to inhabit villages of their own, under lay monastic orders, until the 1960s.

While in the 1980s, Chinese people living in North Korea enjoyed privileged access to trips abroad, today many of them have permanently moved to China.

The Soviet Union had one of the largest Korean minorities abroad, but less than 10,000 of them have repatriated to North Korea, where they have been assimilated into the rest of the society.

[16]The second-biggest group of foreigners in South Korea are migrant workers from Southeast Asia[13] and increasingly from Central Asia (notably Uzbekistan, mostly ethnic Koreans from there, and Mongolians), and in the main cities, particularly Seoul, there is a small but growing number of foreigners related to business and education.

Many Korean agencies encourage 'international' marriages to Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipina, Indonesian, and Thai women, adding a new degree of complexity to the issue of ethnicity (see mail-order bride).