Seoul is not the most apartment-dominated place in Korea, and fewer than half of its households live in one. The 2025 census puts the capital's apartment share of households at 44.8%, well below Gyeonggi and every other metropolitan city, from Busan and Incheon to Sejong.
The national picture is still an apartment majority, reached only recently: 54.5% of households in 2025, up from 48.1% in 2015. This guide explains what the census counts, why Seoul's numbers look different, how apartments spread from the 1960s, how jeonse renting fits in, and how to read Korean housing terms. The figures come from the national statistics agency, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the National Archives of Korea and the Academy of Korean Studies.
What the 2025 census counts
The census counts two different things, and mixing them up gives two different answers. The national statistics agency, 국가데이터처, published its 2025 register-based census results on 28 July 2026, using administrative records with a reference date of 1 November 2025.
The first measure is homes. On that date Korea had 20.181 million homes, up 1.6% in a year, and 13.289 million of them, or 65.8%, were apartments; detached houses numbered 3.830 million, or 19.0%.
The second measure is households. Of 22.495 million general households, 54.5% lived in apartments, 27.2% in detached houses and 10.8% in row houses or multi-unit villas, while 6.1% lived in places the census does not class as housing at all.
That last category matters for anyone trying to picture a city. The census defines "주택이외의 거처", dwellings other than housing, as including "오피스텔, 호텔·여관 등 숙박업소의 객실, 5인 이하 기숙사 및 특수사회시설, 판잣집, 비닐하우스 등": officetels, rooms in hotels and inns, small dormitories, shacks and vinyl greenhouses.
Both measures have been rising steadily. Apartments were 62.9% of homes in 2020 and 65.8% in 2025, and the household share climbed every year from 51.5% in 2020 to 54.5% in 2025, while the share living in detached houses fell from 35.3% in 2015 to 27.2%.
New building keeps tilting the stock. Of 280,000 homes completed between January and October 2025, 253,000 were apartments, 16,000 detached houses and 10,000 row houses or villas.
The stock is concentrated around the capital. The census puts 46.8% of all homes, 9.45 million, in the capital region of Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi, and says the largest increases in 2025 were in Gyeonggi (80,000 homes), Seoul (46,000) and Incheon (34,000).
Much of Korea's housing is not new. The census says 56.0% of all homes were built 20 or more years ago and 30.6% 30 or more years ago, and that the largest single group, 26.6% of all homes, dates from the 1990s.
Apartments also hold larger households. The census gives an average of 2.46 people per household in apartments, the highest of any dwelling type, against 1.77 in detached houses and 1.43 in dwellings other than housing.
Seoul's numbers look different
Seoul has fewer apartment households than its housing stock suggests. Of Seoul's 3.216 million homes, 1.952 million, or 60.7%, are apartments, yet the census table of households by dwelling type puts Seoul's apartment households at just 44.8%.
The rest of Seoul's households are spread across other types. The same table gives 23.0% in detached houses, 18.6% in 다세대 (multi-unit villa) buildings, 2.4% in row houses, 1.9% in homes inside non-residential buildings and 9.3% in dwellings other than housing.
Seoul stands out on two of those. The census says the share of households in 다세대 housing is highest in Seoul, at 18.6%, and Seoul's 9.3% in non-housing dwellings is among the highest, behind only Incheon's 9.6%. By homes rather than households, 다세대 buildings make up 26.2% of Seoul's stock, against 11.4% nationally.
The census's own counting rules explain part of the gap between homes and households. Seoul has 4.360 million households but 3.216 million homes, and a multi-household detached house (다가구주택) counts as one home however many households rent rooms in it; the census says that when each separately let unit is counted, Seoul has 910,000 such multi-household units, the most of any region.
By households, Seoul is the second-largest region, with 4.360 million against Gyeonggi's 5.911 million and Busan's 1.495 million, so its lower apartment share applies to a very large number of households.
Seoul also has the country's highest share of people living alone. The census puts one-person households at 40.5% of Seoul households, the highest of any region, against 36.6% nationally.
The table below compares Seoul with the national figure and several other regions. All shares come from the 2025 census tables on homes and on households by dwelling type.
| Region | Apartments as share of homes | Households in apartments | Households in 다세대 | Households in non-housing dwellings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationwide | 65.8% | 54.5% | 8.8% | 6.1% |
| Seoul | 60.7% | 44.8% | 18.6% | 9.3% |
| Busan | 70.3% | 60.3% | 9.7% | 7.8% |
| Incheon | 69.1% | 59.5% | 15.0% | 9.6% |
| Gyeonggi | 72.6% | 61.1% | 10.4% | 6.9% |
| Sejong | 87.6% | 79.4% | 0.7% | 2.3% |
| Jeju | 31.7% | 25.8% | 11.0% | 7.4% |
Sejong, the planned administrative city, has the highest apartment share of homes at 87.6%, followed by Gwangju at 82.0% and Daejeon at 77.0%. The census says Jeju is the only one of Korea's 17 provinces and metropolitan cities where detached houses (38.2%) outnumber apartments, which make up 31.7% of homes there.
If you travel on from Seoul, Busan is more apartment-heavy than the capital on both measures.
From Mapo to the new towns
Apartments in Korea are older than the 1970s boom. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, published by the Academy of Korean Studies, says the first was the five-storey Yurim apartment building in Chungjeong-ro, Seoul, built in 1932 under Japanese rule, followed by buildings put up by the colonial Government-General in Hyehwa-dong, Seodaemun and Jeokseon-dong.
After liberation the sequence restarted. The encyclopedia names Jongam apartments (1959) as the first, and says the Mapo apartments that followed introduced Koreans to the idea of the apartment complex, the 아파트단지, and persuaded the public that apartments were worth living in.
The date of Mapo is recorded two ways. The encyclopedia gives 1961, while the National Archives of Korea's apartment history page says "1962년에는 대규모 단지인 마포아파트가 건립되었다" and describes a complex of ten six-storey buildings with 642 households, the most of any apartment complex in the country at the time.
The state drove the early building. The National Archives page says "1962년 정부 주도로 주택건설을 추진하는 대한주택공사가 생겼다", the government-led Korea National Housing Corporation was founded in 1962, and the encyclopedia says the Second Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1967–1971) pushed apartment construction further.
The boom that made apartments middle-class came in 1970. Both sources name Hangang Mansion (한강맨션), built that year with larger flats for middle- and upper-income households and, according to the Archives, "우리나라 최초의 중앙식 중온수공급 보일러", the country's first central hot-water boiler system.
Large planned complexes followed. The encyclopedia says Banpo, Yeouido and Jamsil in Seoul, and cities across the country, gained apartment complexes with schools, markets, playgrounds, landscaping and parking, and that large complexes in Seongnam, Goyang and Anyang in the late 1980s made the apartment the ordinary Korean home.
The 1990s new towns fixed the pattern around Seoul. The National Archives says "1990년대 조성된 일산, 분당, 산본 등의 서울 근처 도시들은 모두 아파트촌으로 기획되었다", that Ilsan, Bundang and Sanbon were all planned as apartment towns, and ends its page: "그야말로 대한민국은 아파트 공화국이다", Korea is truly an apartment republic.
The encyclopedia's explanation centres on land. It says about 70% of Korea's land is mountainous, that urban land is scarce and expensive as people crowd into cities, and that high-rise apartments use a site more efficiently; it calls the apartment an unavoidable urban housing form of modern society.
The long-run census table shows how complete the change was. In 1980 Korea had 5.434 million homes, of which 4.652 million were detached houses and 536,000 multi-unit homes; the census notes those early type counts exclude empty homes. Detached houses peaked in 1990 at 4.727 million and have fallen ever since, to 3.830 million in 2025. Multi-unit homes overtook them by 1995, when the census counted 4.732 million multi-unit homes against 4.490 million detached houses, and by 2025 they numbered 16.140 million, 80.0% of the stock.
Many of today's apartments are no longer new. The census says 22.2% of apartments, 2.953 million homes, were 30 or more years old in 2025, and apartments built in the 1990s make up 28.0% of the apartment stock.
Jeonse and how Koreans rent
Jeonse, 전세, is a rental arrangement the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture treats as distinctively Korean, and it defines it simply. The tenant deposits part of the home's price with the owner, lives there without paying monthly rent, and gets the deposit back when the contract ends.
The encyclopedia calls jeonse "우리나라의 독특한 주택임대차 제도", a distinctively Korean form of rental. It explains the logic for both sides: the owner raises money interest-free to help buy the home, and the tenant rents for around half the purchase price instead of paying interest every month.
The arrangement predates apartments by decades. The encyclopedia traces jeonse to the period after the 1876 Ganghwa Treaty, when Seoul's population grew quickly, and says that in late Joseon the deposit was usually about half the house price, sometimes 70 to 80%, for a term of about a year; it became fully established during the Korean War and industrialisation, as urban housing shortages deepened.
It also says the system depended on rising prices. In the encyclopedia's account, written in 2012, owners gained when house prices rose, but if prices stall, lending a home for a fraction of its value stops making sense, and landlords now increasingly prefer monthly rent or rent with a deposit.
The census history it cites shows jeonse rising and then falling. Jeonse households were 17.3% of all households in 1975 and 29.7% in 1995; the number fell from 4.039 million in 2000 to 3.766 million in 2010, when the share was 21.7%.
The 2024 Korea Housing Survey, a sample of 61,000 households by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, shows how renting sits today. It found 58.4% of households lived in a home they owned, 38.0% rented and 3.6% lived rent-free, with the renting share highest in the capital region at 44.4%.
The survey shows how apartments and jeonse combine in people's plans. Asked where they would live on marrying, unmarried households most often chose "아파트에 전세", jeonse in an apartment, at 41.7%, ahead of owning an apartment at 37.5% and jeonse in a 다세대 villa at 5.4%.
Apartment living also varies by age in the survey. It found 53.1% of all households lived in apartments, against 73.4% of newlywed households, 47.2% of older households and 31.0% of young households.
The ministry draws one direct conclusion about apartments. It notes that newlywed households live in smaller homes than average, 27.4 square metres per person against 36.0, yet fewer of them fall below the minimum housing standard, and suggests this reflects their high rate of apartment living.
Ownership is lowest around Seoul. The survey puts home ownership at 61.4% nationally and owner-occupancy at 58.4%, but owner-occupancy is only 52.7% in the capital region, against 60.0% in the metropolitan cities and 66.5% in the provinces.
Households also moved less often in 2024 than a year earlier; the survey's two-year moving rate fell from 32.2% to 30.3%. The survey gives an average stay in the current home of 8.4 years in 2024, up from 8.0, and says it took households an average of 7.9 years from becoming household heads to buying their first home.
Housing costs are highest around Seoul. The survey puts the median home-price-to-income ratio for owners at 6.3 times nationally and 8.7 times in the capital region, and puts renters' rent-to-income ratio in the capital region at 18.4%, against a national median of 15.8%.
Reading Korean housing words
Korean housing terms map onto census categories, and knowing them helps when you read Korean housing statistics. The table decodes the main terms; no official source read for this guide publishes typical prices or rents, so the price column says so.
| Name | Local name | What it is | Price range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apartment | 아파트 | Multi-unit building of five or more storeys, per the encyclopedia | Not published |
| Apartment complex | 아파트단지 | Group of apartment blocks with shared facilities | Not published |
| Detached house | 단독주택 | Single house, including multi-household types | Not published |
| Multi-household house | 다가구주택 | Detached house with rooms let to several households, counted as one home | Not published |
| Multi-unit villa | 다세대주택 | Multi-unit housing category; 18.6% of Seoul households | Not published |
| Row house | 연립주택 | Multi-unit housing, a separate census category | Not published |
| Officetel | 오피스텔 | Counted by the census as a dwelling other than housing | Not published |
| Jeonse | 전세 | Large refundable deposit instead of monthly rent | Historically about half the home price |
| Monthly rent | 월세 | Rent paid monthly | Not published |
Apartment buildings themselves come in recognisable layouts, and the encyclopedia names them. It describes hall-type blocks with a central stair and lift core, common in high-rise buildings; corridor-type blocks with flats along one or both sides of a corridor; stair-type blocks where flats pair off around each staircase; and two-storey maisonette units, citing Banpo Jugong complex 1 and Mokdong as examples.
The survey also measures floor space. The Housing Survey gives 36.0 square metres per person nationally and 33.0 in the capital region, and unmarried respondents said a home on marriage should be at least 75.8 square metres, larger than the 2024 average of 68.1.
The villa and row-house rows above are the census categories as the statistics agency lists them; the census release read for this guide does not define their size or storey limits, so none are given here.
The steps below turn the census categories into a quick way to read a district. They use only the published tables, which break down homes and households by region.
What visitors will notice
For a visitor, the census explains why Seoul's housing looks mixed rather than uniform. With 26.2% of homes in 다세대 villas and 8.8% detached, about two in five of the city's homes (39.3%) are not apartments, even though apartments are still 60.7% of the stock.
New building is overwhelmingly apartments. Apartments made up 253,000 of the 280,000 homes completed in the first ten months of 2025, about nine in ten.
Many homes stand empty at any one time. The census counted 1.722 million unoccupied homes on 1 November 2025, 8.5% of the total, and notes that the figure includes new homes not yet occupied and homes empty between sales or moves.
That number is rising. The census counted 122,000 more unoccupied homes than a year earlier, an increase of 7.7%, and 13.9% more than five years before.
If you are planning your days by neighbourhood, our three-day Seoul itinerary groups sights by district.
What this guide does not cover
A current national share of jeonse households is not given, because neither the 2025 census release nor the 2024 Housing Survey release read for this guide publishes one; the latest figure here is the encyclopedia's 21.7% for 2010.
House prices and typical rents are not covered. No official source read for this guide gives prices by district, and the survey figures used here are national or capital-region medians.
The rules for staying in a private apartment as a tourist are not covered. The legal text that governs registered homestays could not be loaded, so this guide makes no claim about which apartments may host visitors.
The census sources do not say why households choose apartments, and no official source read here makes a causal link between jeonse and the spread of apartments. The history above is limited to what the National Archives and the Academy of Korean Studies record.
One encyclopedia figure is left out on purpose. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture's apartment entry gives a 1998 national housing total that does not match the census series, so this guide relies on the census for all counts.