This study approaches the establishment of official statistics in South Korea, focusing on the characteristics of statistics as modern knowledge, institution, and practice. Statistics constitutes a crucial part of modern administrative and knowledge systems necessary for government, an important task for newly independent states after World War II. This study highlights the deployment process in a postcolonial context and involvement with direct and indirect practices of the West, especially the US. Most statistical policies and institutional changes in the early 1960s were based on advice from the Statistical Advisory Group (SAG) in South Korea. SAG investigated the condition of Korean statistics thoroughly and composed a series of official reports for the South Korean government. Statistical development in the 1960s was one of the important factors that formed a strong state in South Korea. Furthermore, statistics as the state’s knowledge of the state means knowledge for other states. The rise of official statistics in South Korea exhibits ‘statistical internationalism’—a postcolonial project to change the Third World into a knowable place.