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About Seoul

Population

As of the end of 2007, Seoul had a population of some 10,421,782 people with a total of 4,046,000 households. This represented roughly a quarter of the population of the Republic of Korea, despite the city accounting for less than 1 percent of the country’s area.

At the start of the Joseon Era, when the city first became the capital of the country, the population within the city walls was no more than 100,000, with a population density of 6,200 people per square kilometer. Until the end of the Joseon Era, the city managed to keep its population from exceeding 200,000, but population density was high at 11,000-12,000 people per square kilometer. In 1910, the population was 278,958, but this expanded to 404,202 by 1935 and, with the expansion of the city district in 1936, to 727,241 people. In 1942, the population broke the million mark when it hit 1,114,000 people, with a population density of 8,313 per square kilometer.

When Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the population dropped a bit to 900,000, but with the return of Koreans from abroad, the migration of country folk to the capital and another urban expansion in 1949, the population jumped drastically to 1.6 million just prior to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.

By 1960, Seoul’s population was 2.45 million with a population density of 9,112 people per square kilometer. In 1963, the limits of the city were expanded greatly, boosting the population to 3.25 million. With Korea’s dramatic industrialization and economic development, Seoul grew even faster. In 1970, the population was 5.32 million. In 1976, it was 7.25 million. In 1983, it was 9.2 million, and by the Seoul Olympics of 1988, it had jumped to 10,286,503 people. Seoul had finally joined the world’s mega cities of 10 million or more.

Much of the population increase has been in the relatively affluent areas of Seoul south of Hangang. In the 1970s, some three quarters of the population of the city lived north of Hangang. Now, the populations of both halves of the city are roughly equal.

There are some 220,000 foreigners residing in Seoul, with the largest concentration of foreigners found in the city’s Yongsan area.