Foreign ownership of Jeju land falls 1.4 pct

JEJU, South Korea, Feb. 16 (Yonhap) -- The amount of land owned by foreigners on South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju decreased slightly last year, official data showed Sunday.

According to the data released by Jeju's provincial government, foreigners owned 22,548,255 square meters in 14,644 land on Jeju Island as of the end of last year.

The volume marked a reduction of 1.4 percent from 22,868,330 square meters at the end of 2018.

By region, foreign land ownership in the city of Jeju amounted to 11.08 million square meters, compared with 11.46 million square meters for the city of Seogwipo.

By nationality, Chinese people possessed 9,818,495 square meters last year, which marked a slight increase from 9,807,542 square meters the previous year and accounted for 43.5 percent of all foreign land ownership on the island.

Land owned by Americans and Japanese totaled 4.29 million and 2.08 million square meters, respectively.

Jeju officials said foreign ownership of land for leisure activities slightly decreased last year, whereas foreigners increased their ownership of housing lots on the island.

Foreign land ownership on Jeju had spiked from 11.58 million square meters in 2015 to 22.8 million square meters in 2017, thanks to its growing popularity among foreign tourists and investors.

The officials attributed the decreased foreign land ownership to a prolonged slump in the island's property market and a downturn in large-scale foreign investments.

ycm@yna.co.kr
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