Half of Korean Households Live in Apartments

One in two households in Korea lived in apartments last year, the first time the proportion has exceeded 50 percent.

According to Statistics Korea on Thursday, there were 20.5 million households in Korea last year, up 332,000 or 1.6 percent from the year before.

The number of "ordinary" households, which excludes 17,000 collective ones like university dorms or nursing homes as well as 503,000 all-foreign households, stood at 19.98 million. Among those, 10.01 million or 50.1 percent lived in apartments.

Some 6.42 million or 32.1 percent lived in detached houses and 2.31 million or 11.6 percent in low-rise multiple housing units. The percentage of apartments among all 17.63 million homes was a record 61.4 percent. It has been steadily rising from 47.8 percent in 2000.

Some 1.42 million homes stood empty, 155,000 or 12.2 percent more than the previous year, and 772,000 or 54.4 percent of them were apartments.

The dormitory towns of Gyeonggi Province had the most empty homes with 250,000, followed by North Gyeongsang Province with 137,000 and South Gyeongsang Province with 132,000. One in three were older than 30 years.

Overall nearly half of all homes in Korea were older than 20 years, and 17.5 percent over 30 years old.