How big is Seoul?

Some of my readers have recently been enquiring as to just how big Seoul is. My standard answer is '10 million,' but numbers that big have a tendency to loose all meaning. For all intents and purposes 10,000,000 = infinity.

In all actuality, my answer of 10 million is a bit outdated and only for Seoul itself and not the entire metropolitan area. The current population of the Seoul metro area is 22,300,000 people. This is the third largest city in the world after Tokyo and Mexico City. Wow! New York is close behind Seoul as the fourth largest city in the world.

You can view my data source here.