Monoethnicity is the existence of a single ethnic group in a given region or country. It is the opposite of polyethnicity.
An example of a largely monoethnic country is Japan. It is a common belief in Japan that the entire country is monoethnic, but a few ethnic minorities live in Japan (e.g. Zainichi, Ainu people, and Ryukyuan people). They represent around 2.3% of the whole population. [1] 平成24年末現在における外国人登録者統計について].
South Korea is another monoethnic country. There are small ethnic minorities that exist in South Korea, where they account for around 5.2% of the South Korean population. These include around 900,000 Chinese immigrants.
Most African countries have what would be considered a mono-racial society, but it is common to find dozens of ethnic groups within the same country.
The Yugoslav Wars are noted as having made Yugoslavia's successor states "de facto and de jure monoethnic nation-states", with Bosnia and Herzegovina further diving itself into mono-ethnic enclaves.
Because not all countries collect data on ethnicity, and the collection of data usually relies on self-reporting, it can be difficult to discern how monoethnic a country is.
1 | 26,298,666 | Koreans | 99.998% | |||
2 | 111,247,248 | Egyptians | 99.7% | |||
3 | 2,227,548 | Basotho | 99.7% | |||
4 | 47,022,473 | Arab-Amazigh | 99% | Almost all Algerians are Arab in origin with only a minority being entirely Amazigh | ||
5 | 168,697,184 | Bengalis | 99% | |||
6 | 37,387,585 | Arab-Amazigh | 99% | Does not include data from Western Sahara | ||
7 | 318,007 | Ni-Vanuatu | 99% | |||
8 | 2,976,765 | Armenians | 98.1% | |||
9 | 12,048,847 | Arab-Amazigh | 98% | |||
10 | 3,107,100 | Albanian people | 98% | |||
11 | 123,201,945 | Japanese people | 97.5% | |||
12 | 38,746,310 | Polish people | 96.9% | This number represents the percentage of people who indicated Polish as their primary ethnicity | ||
13 | 104,889 | Tongan | 96.5% | |||
14 | 116,545 | I-Kiribati | 95.78% | |||
15 | 82,011 | Marshallese | 95.6% | |||
16 | 17,063,669 | Khmer people | 95.4% | |||
17 | 726,799 | Melanesians | 95.4% | |||
18 | 5,364,482 | Arabs | 97% | |||
19 | 10,207,177 | Portuguese | 95% | |||
20 | 51,217,221 | Koreans | 94.8% | ! "출입국통계". Ministry of Justice (in Korean). Retrieved April 4, 2025. | ||
21 | 9,892 | Nauruan people | 94.6% | |||
22 | 10,650,239 | Azerbaijani | 91.6% | |||
23 | 4,150,116 | Croat | 91.6% | |||
24 | 1,416,043,270 | Han Chinese | 91.1% | |||
25 | 58,947,905 | Italians | 91% | ! "Indicatori demografici, anno 2020" (PDF).
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26 | 36,544,431 | Arab | 90% | |||
27 | 5,603,851 | Finns | 89.8% | ! | ||
28 | 18,148,155 | Romanian people | 89.3% | Data represents only those who declared an ethnicity in the 2021 census | ||
29 | 5,744,151 | Turkmen people | 87.6% | |||
30 | 4,900,961 | Georgian people | 86.8% | |||
31 | 105,758,975 | Viet | 85.3% | |||
5,483,450 | Palestinian | 91% | ||
265,100 | Turkish Cypriots | 99.2% | ||
6,200,000 | Somalis | 99% | ||
23,347,374 | Han Chinese | 97% | ||
7,249,907 | Cantonese people and Taishanese people | 92% | ||
1,586,659 | Kosovo Albanians | 92% | ||
55,877 | Inuit | 89.7% | ||
53,532 | Ossetians | 89.9% | ||
614,458 | Cantonese people and Macanese people | 88.7% | ||
30,696 | Ålanders | 86.5% |
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