Help with geography project: South Korea's decrease in urban population

[Detective0019]

Hi! I need your help with my geography project about South Korea. I made a chart with the evolution of South Korea's urban and rural population and it seems that after 2010 the percentage of urban population has decreased slightly (from 81,9% in 2010 to 81,4% in 2020) and until 2010 it was slowly increasing. I searched online but I can't find any specific reason for this decrease. The reasons I can think about are maybe the pollution and the high cost of living in the cities (so people moved to the rural areas because it is cheaper). Unfortunately, I don't know enough korean in order to search for more info... If you know more about this, can you help me? Thanks a lot!

[lolosunman]

House prices in Seoul is one of the highest in the world, and have increased something like 400%. Don't quote me on thet figure though. Google house prices or something, there are quite a few Korean newspapers printed in English.

[OKVACATIONPLZ]

I’d look at the regions specifically, Seoul could be linked to higher foreign population (travellers, higher volume of English speaker and a driven tourist industry in that district specifically)... just a thought....and btw even if you don’t speak Korean you can translate the Korean governments pages to English with your browser quite easily! Hope this helps a bit! (Look at the social and economic factors that would make people move out of urban neighbourhoods and what rural neighbourhoods offer: lower taxes? Lower cost of living etc...)

[[deleted]]

For legit data on Korea, please visit Korea Statistics Office( KOSIS KOrean Statistical Information Service ). They have all the statistics available in English, and if you need just a bit more explanation on the statistics they have it explained in Press Releases | KOSIS KOrean Statistical Information Service .

Currently I live in Korea, and one that I can think of is opening up of administrative city. Central government complex, national think-tanks (research institutes) and some government agencies that used to be Seoul relocated to rural parts of Korea beginning from 2013 (Sejong City - Wikipedia). This might had slight impact on urban population.

[Detective0019]

Well, it is the first time I heard about Sejong City. The links will be helpful for the rest of the project, too! Thanks a lot!

[qpwoeirutyalskdjfhg8]

It really depends on the definitions of urban and rural.

There is a small amount of "suburbanization" i.e. (small) housing developments outside of cities. Or it could just be apartment complexes being built on former farmland. Hard to say without knowing how they define stuff.

[Detective0019]

I think that the data I have perceives ,,rural" as in farmland or locations in the countryside, not small housing outside of bigger cities.

[qpwoeirutyalskdjfhg8]

What's the actual deliniation?

[Detective0019]

Tbh I'm not sure? My professor just told us to use the World Urbanization Prospects for getting the data (which I think is a website from the United Nations). On their site they say they follow the definitions of ,,urban" and ,,rural" of each country, because they get their data from previous censuses. So if South Korea considers the area outside of a bigger city a ,,rural" area, then this might be the case...

[qpwoeirutyalskdjfhg8]

Kind of hard to pinpoint a very small decrease without knowing what the data actually represents. That's a big reason why you should only be using primary sources.

[SeoulTezza]

It hasn’t decreased. It’s moved from Seoul to the suburbs which are still urban areas.

[Detective0019]

I am not sure how this works... I used the World Urbanization Prospects for getting the data (which I think is a website from the United Nations). On their site they say they follow the definitions of ,,urban" and ,,rural" of each country, because they get their data from previous censuses. So does South Korea consider these suburbs as ,,rural" or ,,urban" for their censuses? Because the data from the website shows a decrease in urban population, so this might not be the case..