(Yonhap)
Foreign ownership of South Korean land expanded nearly 2 percent in 2020 from a year earlier, the land ministry said Friday.
Foreigners owned 253.3 square kilometers of land here as of the end of December last year, up 1.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
The amount is slightly more than four times the size of Manhattan and accounts for 0.25 percent of South Korea's total land area.
The value of land held by foreigners grew 3.1 percent to 31.49 trillion won ($28.2 billion) over the cited period.
US nationals topped all nationalities in terms of ownership, owning 52.6 percent of all land owned by foreigners.
Chinese citizens came next with 7.9 percent, followed by Europeans with 7.2 percent and Japanese with 7 percent.
South Korean expatriates held 55.8 percent of the total land owned by foreign entities, trailed by joint ventures with 28.1 percent, foreign firms with 8.4 percent and foreign individuals with 7.4 percent.
By region, Gyeonggi Province surrounding the South Korean capital of Seoul took up 18.1 percent of all foreign-owned land in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
The southern resort island of Jeju saw its foreign ownership of land increase 8.8 percent on-year to 21.81 million square meters last year, according to the ministry. (Yonhap)