The first information about Korostyshev in the sources is dated to the 15th century. The first mention of Jews in the city dates back to the 16th century. Since 1602, according to written sources, a synagogue operated in Korostyshev. The local community was the third largest after Chudnov and Berdichev. In 1772, the kahal paid 1.2 thousand zloty as a poll tax.

After the division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Korostyshev was part of the Volyn, and from 1797, of the Kiev province. In the 1880s, there were 3 synagogues in the city.

According to the 1897 census, Jews accounted for 52.9% of citizens. In the town lived 4.1 thousand people.

At the beginning of the 20th century, 6 synagogues worked in Korostyshev. The Jews owned 22 groceries, 12 flour shops and 8 haberdashery shops, 5 stores selling pharmaceutical goods, 3 timber stores, 6 cloth factories and a tar factory, as well as parquet workshops.

In Korostyshev, a Jewish loan company, a Jewish hospital and a pharmacy worked.

During the revolutionary years, the Jewish population suffered from pogroms in 1918 and 1919. It is known that in the 1920s, immigrants from the city living in the USA helped victims of the pogroms.

The Jews of the town took an active part in the construction of the new government. Korostyshev Jews founded an agricultural commune named after Volodarsky, and in the 1920s, they created collective farms in the Kherson region.

In the 1920s, schools worked in Korostyshev in which the language of instruction was Yiddish. By 1926, 3 thousand Jews lived in the city, which made up 37.3% of the townspeople. By the 1930s, schools and synagogues were closed.

According to 1939, there were 2.1 thousand Jews in Korostyshev.

The city was occupied on July 9, 1941. A few days later, the Germans shot 40 male Jews, accusing them of sabotage. The rest of the population was driven into an open ghetto. In August 1941, the invaders began to liquidate the ghetto. In the Korostyshev area, Jews from nearby settlements were also shot. Executions took place on the southern outskirts of the city, near the Jewish cemetery and in a pine forest outside the city. During the aktion, about 2 thousand people were killed.

In September 1941, the Nazis carried out another execution, killing the remaining Jews of Korostyshev and neighboring settlements. In total, according to the State Commission, the Nazis killed about 3 thousand Jews.

After the war, 500 Jews returned to the city. In 1946, a synagogue was opened in the city. On holidays, it was visited by up to 125 people.

The mass emigration of Jews began in the late 1980s. By 1995, 70 Jews lived in the city.