Korean - Settlements

Before recent economic growth and industrialization accelerated urbanization, most Koreans lived in the countryside. In 1910 when Japan colonized Korea, the urban population of Korea was no more than 3 percent of the total population. Traditionally Korean villages were located along the southern foothills, and many Koreans believed that an ideal site for a house or village must have a hill behind it and a stream in front.

In some villages the population consists solely of members of one lineage; other villages have many different lineages. The size of villages varies, ranging from 10 to 150 households. Most of the housing consists of one-story structures made of stone or homemade bricks. Formerly, some of the houses had thatch roofs, which have been replaced by tile or slate roofs as part of the New Village movement that began in 1970. Traditionally, rooms were heated by the ondol method, and hot air from burning wood outdoors warmed the stone floor. Now coal, oil, and electricity are replacing wood.

Rural settlement patterns have been altered significantly by a massive migration from rural to urban to industrialized areas beginning in the mid-1960s. In this period, at least 9 million farmers and their families, nearly a quarter of the total population, are estimated to have left their farms and moved to cities. In 1988, the urban population reached over 78 percent. In mid-1989, the population of Seoul, the capital, was more than 10.5 million, nearly one-fourth of the entire South Korean population, with a population density of 17,365 persons per square kilometer. Construction of large numbers of high-rise apartment complexes in Seoul and other cities has alleviated housing shortages to some extent and has determined the major settlement pattern of urban Korea.