Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
Housing prices force 1.74 mil. residents to leave Seoul since 2014
Apartment complexes in a densely populated area of Seoul / Yonhap
By Anna J. Park
Seoul net population dropped 861,000 over past decade
Seoul's net population has dropped by 861,000 over the past decade, due mostly to factors related to the metropolitan city's skyrocketing housing prices.
According to data compiled by Statistics Korea, the number of people that moved out of Seoul over the past 10 years to other cities or provinces, including Busan, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, stood at approximately 5.47 million. As the number of people moving into the capital amounted to 4.61 million during the same period, Seoul witnessed a net outflow of some 861,000 people during the last decade.
It is the biggest net outflow posted among 10 cities and provinces during the period.
The main reason behind the migration turns out to be housing, with about 1.74 million people citing it as their primary reason for leaving Seoul according to Statistics Korea. Specifically, this means that they decided to move out of the city after purchasing housing elsewhere, or their lease contracts expired and they found a new place of residence outside of the city.
According to the Korea Real Estate Board (REB), the average transactional price for an apartment in Seoul from January to November last year stood at 13.98 million won ($10,493) per square meter, meaning that about 1.15 billion won is necessary to get a 82-square-meter apartment. The average price is more than double what it costs to purchase a place of the same size in Gyeonggi Province or Incheon.
Data from the real estate portal R114 showed that Seoul's apartment prices soared by 144 percent during the past 10 years on average. When compared to the national average increase of 107 percent during the same period, Seoul's increase is 37 percentage points higher.
The majority of people leaving Seoul relocated to surrounding areas, such as Gyeonggi Province and Incheon. Out of the 1.74 million people who left Seoul due to housing, 86.8 percent, or 1.51 million, moved to Gyeonggi Province or Incheon.
At the same time, the top two reasons for people moving to Seoul were cited as employment and education.