India vs South Korea

India is 33 times larger than South Korea — 3,287,263 against 99,720 km². India is 28 times more populous than South Korea — 1,463,865,525 against 51,684,564 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Korea is 1.2 times more densely populated than India — 518 against 445 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — India on the left, South Korea on the right.
• Different currencies: the Indian rupee and the South Korean won.

India

The most populous country in the world since 2023. The Ganges-Brahmaputra system drains the southern Himalaya into the largest delta on Earth, and Mawsynram and Cherrapunji in Meghalaya are the wettest inhabited places on record, with roughly 11 m of rain a year. Mumbai is the largest individual municipality; the Delhi urban agglomeration, which contains the capital, is larger still at around 33 million.

South Korea

About seventy percent mountain, so the population is packed into the valleys and coastal plains; the Seoul metropolitan area holds roughly half the country. Jeju Island is a shield volcano whose lava tube system is among the finest in the world. South Korea has the fastest average internet connections of any large country.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.