Mexico vs South Korea

Mexico is 20 times larger than South Korea — 1,964,375 against 99,720 km². Mexico is 2.6 times more populous than South Korea — 131,946,900 against 51,684,564 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Korea is 7.7 times more densely populated than Mexico — 518 against 67 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

• Different currencies: the Mexican peso and the South Korean won.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — North America and Asia.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

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.