Islam in Korea

In South Korea, Islam (이슬람교) is a very small minority religion. The Muslim community (almost entirely made up of foreign guest workers) is centered on Seoul, where the first large 20th-century mosque was built in 1976 using the funds of the Malaysian Islamic Mission and other Islamic countries.

According to the Korea Muslim Federation, there are about 120,000 to 130,000 Muslims living in South Korea, both Koreans and foreigners. The majority of the Muslim population is made up of migrant workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, but the number of Korean Muslims amounts to some 35,000.

During the middle to late 7th century, Muslim traders had traversed from the Caliphate to Tang China and established contact with Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. In 751, a Chinese general of Goguryeo descent, Gao Xianzhi, led the Battle of Talas for the Tang dynasty against the Abbasid Caliphate but was defeated. The earliest reference to Korea in a non-East Asian geographical work appears in the General Survey of Roads and Kingdoms by Estakhri in the mid-9th century.

The first verifiable presence of Islam in Korea dates back to the 9th century during the Unified Silla period with the arrival of Persian and Arab navigators and traders. According to numerous Muslim geographers, including the 9th-century Muslim Persian explorer and geographer Ibn Khordadbeh, many of them settled down permanently in Korea, establishing Muslim villages. Some records indicate that many of these settlers were from Iraq. Korean records suggest that a large number of the Muslim foreigners settled in Korea in the 9th century CE led by a man named Hasan Raza Further suggesting a Middle Eastern Muslim community in Silla are figurines of royal guardians with distinctly Persian characteristics. In turn, later many Muslims intermarried with Korean women. Some assimilation into Buddhism and Shamanism took place owing to Korea's geographical isolation from the Muslim world.

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