South Korea's urban population shrinks in 2012

South Korea's urban population shrank for the first time in over 40 years in 2012 despite a growth in the overall size of urban areas, a government report showed Friday. The country's urban population came to 91.04 percent of its total population at the end of last year, down 0.8 percentage point from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The proportion of urban population dropped for the first time since at least 1970, it said. The report, however, did not specify the number of people living in urban areas, nor if that number had dropped compared to the previous year. Such a drop in the urban population percentage was apparently helped by a growing number of people returning to farms. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs earlier said the number of households returning to farms jumped over 30 times from 880 in 2001 to over 27,000 households in 2012. Despite a drop in the urban population percentage, the total size of urban areas gained 2.1 percent on-year to 7,039 square kilometers (?) as of the end of 2012. The country's total area also grew by 40 ? to 100,188 ? through land reclamation projects that included an expansion of Seoul's Incheon International Airport, according to the report.