Seoul 23rd August : The population of South Korea dipped for the second time in a row in 2021 and the number of households that are sole-person households increased, according to data from the government released on Tuesday.As of the closing of 2021, the country’s total population was 51,638,809 – down 0.37 percent from the 51,829,023 recorded at the end of 2020, as per figures collected by the Ministry of Interior and Safety.
The latest census figure is the second consecutive drop following an 0.04 percent decrease in 2020, when the record small number of births was overtaken by deaths, causing an unnatural decrease, according to the news agency dpa.
The Ministry has also linked the decline to the government’s decision to revoke resident registration numbers of approximately 143,000 people whose location has not been discovered for a long period of time.
Out of South Korea’s 17 provinces and cities there were only three that saw an increase in population in the past year -Incheon, Sejong and Jeju Island.Incheon, Sejong and Jeju Island according to the data.
The data also revealed an 1.6 percent rise in the total number of households to 23,472,895 this year.
This is mostly due to the increase in the percentage of families with just one member, who comprised more than 40 percent of all households for the first time in the figures revealed.
The figures showed that there were 9.46 million households with one person in the year before, which is around 40.3 percent being followed by households with two persons with 23.9 percent.
Households with four or more were responsible for 18.7 percent.
