South Korea's urban population continued to increase last year with more than 90 percent of the total population living in less than 17 percent of the total land here, a government report showed Thursday.

According to the report from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the number of people living in urban areas came to just short of 47.73 million as of end-2015, up nearly

250,000 from the previous year and accounting for 91.79 percent of the total population.

The total size of land within city limits, on the other hand, gained only 17 square kilometers (㎢) on-year to 17,613.7㎢.

The area accounts for only 16.61 percent of the country's total, according to the report.

Also, green zones, such as parks and greenbelt areas, accounted for nearly 72 percent of all inner-city areas.

South Korean cities have long struggled with high population densities since the proportion of people in urban areas reached over 90 percent of the total population for the first time in 2005.

However, a separate report from the Statistics Office, also released Thursday, showed that Seoul, the capital city with a population of approximately 10 million people, actually saw its population steadily drop since February 2009.

According to the report, a total of 123,000 people moved out of Seoul last month while some 110,000 others moved in.

The difference marked a 0.13-percent on-month drop in the number of people living in Seoul, the fastest drop among all South Korean cities. (Yonhap)