Korea's listed companies cluster in the capital even harder than its workers do

Korea’s formal economy is famously concentrated in and around Seoul, but the listed market is more concentrated still. Take the 2,364 listed companies that file a head-office location and sort them by region: 85.7% sit in the capital region — Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon. The public market is, geographically, a capital-region market with a provincial minority.

Seoul alone holds nearly half

Seoul is home to 1,097 listed head offices, 46.4% of the total — almost one in two. Add Gyeonggi (828, 35.0%), the ring of cities and industrial parks around the capital, and the two together hold 81.4%. Fold in Incheon (100, 4.2%) and the capital region reaches 85.7%. Everything outside it — thirteen regions covering most of the country’s land and population — divides the remaining 14%.

The provinces, in the gaps

Below the capital the list thins fast. Busan, the second city, registers 83 listed head offices (3.5%). Daejeon, with its research institutes, holds 64 (2.7%); Daegu 59 (2.5%); shipbuilding Ulsan just 32 (1.4%). These are not small economies — Ulsan builds much of what Korea exports — but their companies tend to be plants and subsidiaries of groups whose head offices, and whose listings, are registered in Seoul.

More concentrated than the workforce

The striking part is the comparison. Our National Pension work put 61.2% of all enrolled workers in the same capital region — itself a heavy concentration on under 12% of the country’s land. Listed head offices run well past that, at 85.7%. The jobs are concentrated; the head offices, and the capital-market presence that comes with them, are concentrated harder. Where a company keeps its people and where it registers its head office are not the same decision, and the second is more Seoul-bound than the first.

What this is, and what it is not

This is a map of registered addresses, not a verdict. A provincial head office is not a weakness and a Seoul one is not a strength; this is not investment advice, and nothing here says a company’s location predicts its returns. One limit matters most: a head office is not a footprint. A manufacturer registered in Seoul may run every factory in Ulsan or Vietnam, and this count would still place it in the capital. What the figures show is narrower and clean — that when Korean companies list, the address on the filing is a Seoul-area one far more often than the country’s own distribution of work would lead you to expect.