Calculated from the population and area above; their reference dates may differ.
On a familiar scale
≈ 2.78 × Taiwan
The closest rung on the Taiwan reference ladder; see the sources below.
Land per resident
1,939 m² of land per resident
The inverse of population density, from the same area and population figures.
The outline is fitted to this frame, not a map for measuring distances. Outlying islands may make the main landmass appear smaller.
Taking out the land nobody lives on
How much of the land is actually built on?
South Korea
9,522.6 km²9.5% of all land
≈ 3.23 × Kaohsiung City
5,440 people per km² 10.5 times the territory-wide average
The eleven developed land categories that the land ministry itself groups as built infrastructure in its cadastral statistics: building sites and school sites; factory and warehouse sites; roads, railway land, parking lots and filling stations; parks, sports grounds and amusement grounds. Roads alone are more than a third of the total. Forest covers about 63% of the country and farmland a further 19%, and both are excluded, as are miscellaneous land, cemeteries and religious sites. A cadastral category records a parcel’s registered principal use, not measured built surface, so a building site includes the yard around it.
On the other defensible cut (building sites only): 3,420.9 km², 3.4%
Register-based census population, including Korean and foreign residents; registered cadastral land area.
Average administrative density does not describe population distribution in every neighborhood. Compare population definitions and reference dates alongside the numbers.
Place guide
How should this South Korea profile be read?
South Korea is shown as the complete Republic of Korea, not Seoul or the Seoul Capital Area. The national outline and statistics provide a country-scale counterpart to Taiwan.
National geography and settlement
The country includes mountainous interiors, coastal plains, metropolitan cities and islands. A national average combines all of them and therefore looks different from the intensity of the capital region.
Comparing it with Taiwan shows that similar settlement constraints do not produce identical land-per-person results.
Population system
The register-based census includes Korean and foreign residents. That definition is broader than Taiwan’s registered-population figure in a specific way, so the note should accompany precise ratios.
Dates and definitions are visible because official does not automatically mean directly interchangeable.