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PEOPLE GROUP PROFILE

The Red Karen of Thailand

The Red Karen of Thailand, numbering approximately 110,000 people, are No Longer Unreached. They are a Karenni grouping named for a favored color in traditional dress, whose ancestors migrated from Central Asia through Tibet into Myanmar's highlands, with a small community settled near Mae Hong Son in Thailand. They mostly adhere to Animism and Eastern Kayah is their primary language.

Photo by Google. (2026). Image generated by Gemini 2.5 Flash: Red Karen

Fast Facts:

Affinity Group: Southeast Asian Peoples
Country: Thailand
People Cluster: Karen
Primary Language(s): Eastern Kayah (eky)
Primary Religion(s): Animism
Population: 110,000
Strategic Progress Index (SPI): No Longer Unreached
Global Status of Evangelical Christianity (GSEC): 10% or Greater Evangelical
People Group ID: PG010911
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Pray for the Red Karen of Thailand

Join others around the world in praying for the lost to be saved, the gospel to advance, the global Church to grow, and for laborers to be sent out and sustained in the harvest.

Pray Now!
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Dig Deeper (Religion):

Primary Religion: Animism
Religious Affiliation: Ethnoreligion

75%
%
Animism Adherents

Dig Deeper (Language):

Primary Language: Eastern Kayah
Language Family: Sino-Tibetan

100%
%
Kayah, Eastern Speakers

Media Resources in Eastern Kayah:

Films:

No film resources are listed for this language.

Provided by the Jesus Film Project

View all resources

Bible Resources in Eastern Kayah:

No Bible resources are listed for this language.

Provided by Faith Comes by Hearing

Or check out the Eastern Kayah bible at Bible.com

Linked from YouVersion

View all resources

SPI: No longer Unreached

The Red Karen are No Longer Unreached, which means there are more than 2% evangelical Christian populations and there are churches consistent with evangelical faith and practice. There is still more to be done among them.

Next steps for the Red Karen:
Empower local believers to begin praying for their own people
Continue gospel seed sowing and church planting
Encourage local leaders to being leading church planting strategy and looking for Unreached and Unengaged groups nearby

Pray specifically for the Red Karen of Thailand

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
read1 John 4:10

Pray for those without the hope of Christ to understand the depth of God's love and the sacrifice He made for them.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
readRomans 5:10

Pray that God will remove obstacles to the gospel so that many will see the hope He offers through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, and be transformed from being enemies to being His friends.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
readJames 1:2-3

Pray that as people place their faith in Christ, they will consider it pure joy when they face trials of many kinds, trusting in God's promise that the testing of their faith produces perseverance.

For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
read2 Corinthians 1:5

When any who might believe suffer for the sake of the gospel, ask God to deepen their understanding of His grace so that they may share it freely with those who have not received it.

Kayah, Eastern Across Countries (ROP3 - 108337) reported in the following countries:

Strategic Progress Index
All

1 people group

PhotoPeople Group IDNameCountryPopulationStrategic Progress IndexLanguage ▲Religion
Red KarenPG010911Red KarenThailand110,000No Longer UnreachedEastern KayahAnimism

To download a comprehensive people group list in spreadsheet form, visit our Research Data page.

Peoplegroups.org relies on updates from the field and other organizations for much of our data, so if you have any updates, please contact us. We use various international naming standards. For a list of these standards and fields, visit our Data Standards section.

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