The Population Cliff Right Before Our Eyes... Resident Registration Population Declines for 3 Consecutive Years

Ministry of the Interior and Safety Publishes 'Administrative Safety Statistics Yearbook'

Although the domestic population continues to decline, the number of households has rather increased.

On the 22nd, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced the publication of the "2023 Administrative Safety Statistical Yearbook (Issue No. 25)," which comprehensively compiles key statistics necessary for policy formulation, implementation, and academic research in the field of administrative safety. As of the end of last year, the statistical yearbook includes a total of 328 statistics across eight areas: government organization, administrative management, digital government, local administration, local finance, safety policy, and disaster management. This edition also added statistics on mobile IDs and population decline areas.

The characteristics of the main statistics in this yearbook are as follows. First, in the section on population and family structure changes, while the population continues to decline, the number of households has increased due to urbanization and aging.

The registered population was 51,439,038, a decrease of 0.39% (199,771 people) compared to the previous year (51,638,809), showing a trend of population decline for three consecutive years (51.83 million (2020) → 51.64 million (2021) → 51.44 million (2022)). On the other hand, the number of registered households was 23,705,814, an increase of 0.99% (232,919 households) compared to the previous year (23,472,895 households). Among all households, single-person households accounted for 9,724,256 (41.0%), approaching the 10 million mark, indicating that the steady rise in single-person households has been a significant factor in the continuous increase in the total number of households.

In the digital government sector, the use of electronic certificates and Government24 services has significantly increased. The mobile electronic certificate service, which allows various certificates such as resident registration certificates and vaccination certificates to be issued and submitted via smartphones, recorded 8,099,791 uses last year, a 281% increase (5,973,825 cases) compared to the previous year (2,125,966 cases).

The total number of uses of the Government24 service, which allows citizens to apply for, issue, and view necessary civil petitions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without visiting administrative offices, was 382,405,334, an increase of 7.1% (25,202,960 cases) compared to the previous year.

The mobile ID service provides digital identity verification functions both online and offline, and the first mobile ID for the general public, the driver's license, was newly included in this yearbook. The mobile driver's license, issued on personal smartphones under the Road Traffic Act, was piloted from January last year and expanded nationwide from July last year, with a total of 965,068 issued.

In the local finance sector, local government budgets have shown a continuous upward trend. This year, the local government budget was 305.4 trillion won (initial budget, net total), an increase of 5.9% (17.1 trillion won) compared to the previous year (288.3 trillion won). By function, the budget proportions were highest for social welfare at 31.5% (96.3 trillion won), personnel operating expenses at 12.0% (36.5 trillion won), and environment at 9.6% (29.3 trillion won).

In the safety management sector, the number of reports to the Safety Report Center has continued to increase, showing the high public interest in safety hazards around daily life. The number of reports to the Safety Report Center reached 5,654,076, a 14.4% increase (713,206 cases) compared to the previous year (4,940,870 cases). Among these, illegal parking reports accounted for 60.7% (3,431,971 cases), a 20.6% increase (585,259 cases) compared to the previous year (2,846,712 cases), making it the largest category.

The statistical yearbook is provided as an electronic file on the Ministry of the Interior and Safety website under ‘Policy Data → Statistics → Statistical Yearbook & Thematic Statistics’ so that anyone can easily access and use it.

Ha Byung-pil, Director of the Planning and Coordination Office, stated, “Data-based statistical management is essential for policy formulation and implementation that the public can feel. We will continue to discover and provide statistics closely related to citizens’ lives so that the various statistics included in the Administrative Safety Statistical Yearbook can help the public’s understanding and be usefully utilized for data-driven policy making and academic research.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.