For purposes of the Moody's Analytics estimated and forecast data products, we have created geography codes for metropolitan areas in South Korea. South Korea itself has no official definition. Instead, we have utilized the OECD's Competitive Cities in the Global Economy, which defines three metro areas:

• Busan
• Daegu
• Seoul

Competitive Cities in the Global Economy is a synthesis report drawing from OECD metropolitan reviews. The OECD's definitions are available for all three South Korean metro areas, are consistent over them, and extend to other countries.

References:

• OECD: Competitive Cities in the Global Economy (2006)
• Moody's Analytics: Official geographic structure of South Korea
• Moody's Analytics: Subnational data summary for South Korea (TBA)
• Moody's Analytics: Estimated data for South Korea (TBA)

Table 1 of 1. Metropolitan areas in South Korea. Following the OECD's lead, we define each of our metropolitan areas as an aggregate of constituent areas at the level of a province (do), metropolitan city (gwangyeoksi) or special city (teukbyeolsi).

South Korea has a national geo code of IKOR, all codes for its geographic subdivisions use IKOR as a prefix, and all Moody’s Analytics metro area codes feature the letter “M.” Each of the three areas is identified as IKOR(underscore)M(three letters), and you may retrieve them as a group using the basket geo wild card IKOR_M^^^.