An aerial view of apartment complexes in Nowon-gu [Herald DB]
An aerial view of apartment complexes in Nowon-gu [Herald DB]

Last year, 92.1 percent of South Korea's population lived in urban zones that account for just 16.7 percent of the country's total land area of 106,563 square kilometers.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport released its urban planning statistics on Thursday, showing that 47.06 million people — 92.1 percent of the total registered population of about 51.12 million — resided in urban areas.

By land-use designation, urban zones covered 17,740 square kilometers, or 16.7 percent of the national total, followed by management zones at 27,329 square kilometers (25.6 percent), agricultural and forestry zones at 49,191 square kilometers (46.2 percent), natural environment conservation zones at 11,874 square kilometers (11.1 percent), and undesignated areas at 429 square kilometers (0.4 percent).

Within urban zones, green zones accounted for the largest share at 12,555 square kilometers (70.8 percent), followed by residential zones at 2,791 square kilometers (15.7 percent), industrial zones at 1,292 square kilometers (7.3 percent), unsubdivided areas at 753 square kilometers (4.2 percent), and commercial zones at 349 square kilometers (2.0 percent). Compared with 2021, residential zones expanded by 1.9 percent, commercial zones by 2.0 percent, and industrial zones by 4.1 percent, while green zones shrank by 0.3 percent.

Outside urban zones, management zones and agricultural and forestry zones contracted by 0.1 percent and 0.02 percent, respectively, compared with 2021, while natural environment conservation zones grew by 0.1 percent.

Growth management planning zones — introduced in 2014 to curb unplanned development in non-urbanized areas — numbered 13,801 sites covering 4,692 square kilometers as of last year. The designated area has expanded sharply since 2024, when authorities made it mandatory to establish a growth management plan before installing a factory in a planned management zone.

Development permits for construction and conversion of farmland to development use totaled 169,319 cases in 2025, continuing a declining trend over the past five years. Building construction accounted for the largest share at 84,618 cases (50 percent), followed by land-use changes at 47,938 cases (28.3 percent) and installation of structures at 24,418 cases (14.4 percent).

Urban and county planning facilities — including roads, parks and general medical facilities that residents encounter in daily life — totaled 369,000 sites covering 7,237 square kilometers.

By facility type, transportation infrastructure such as roads and railways was the largest category at 2,319 square kilometers (32.0 percent), followed by disaster-prevention facilities such as rivers and retention basins at 2,294 square kilometers (31.7 percent), and open-space facilities such as parks, green areas and plazas at 1,171 square kilometers (16.2 percent).

Facilities designated as urban or county planning facilities but not yet executed covered 427 square kilometers — down 25 square kilometers from the previous year — representing 5.9 percent of the total.

Over the past five years, both the designated and executed areas of urban and county planning facilities have grown steadily, while unexecuted areas have continued to shrink.


hss@heraldcorp.com