When you stack up the real estate lawmakers have declared by district, one fact emerges: even for the same ‘single property,’ where it sits changes the weight of the asset. The place where the most property-holding lawmakers gather is Yeongdeungpo-gu, home of the National Assembly (54). Yet when you line them up by declared value, first place flips to Gangnam-gu, ₩98 billion. ‘How many you own’ and ‘where you own them’ draw different maps.
Why rank by value?
Under the Public Service Ethics Act, lawmakers disclose their assets every year. Real estate is the largest item within, and each filing records ‘what, where, and at what value’ down to the district. The same record reads differently depending on the yardstick. Sort by number of holdings or holding lawmakers and you see ‘where they are widely scattered’; sort by declared value and you see ‘where the valuable assets are concentrated.’
We chose the latter, because in real estate what matters is not only count but also value. A lawmaker with two properties on the outskirts and one with a single property in Gangnam: the former can lead by number of holdings, while the latter can lead by the weight of the asset. The conventional habit of counting only whether someone owns multiple homes misses this point. We summed each disclosed property by the district where it sits, then ranked districts by total declared value, placing value, holding-lawmaker count, and holding count side by side in one table so a single district can be read through three rulers at once.
The four districts with the highest value
First-place Gangnam-gu has piled up ₩98.0 billion in declared value alone. The gap to second-place Seocho-gu (₩73.1B) is ₩24.9 billion, and third-place Mapo (₩50.4B) and fourth-place Songpa (₩50.1B) are barely half of Gangnam. A single district accounts for 14.8%of the entire declared value (₩663.6 billion). Lawmakers’ real-estate wealth is concentrated strongly in a specific area.
The most holders are not in Gangnam
Yet re-rank the same districts by the ‘number of lawmakers holding property’ and first place flips. The place with the most holders is Yeongdeungpo-gu, with 54; Gangnam-gu, at 39, is third. Yeongdeungpo also leads in number of holdings (76), but in declared value it sits sixth at ₩22.6 billion. Many lawmakers, often, hold property in Yeongdeungpo, yet the weight of that value falls far short of Gangnam.
This divergence is the heart of the data. The map of holders and the map of declared value do not overlap. Yeongdeungpo leads in holders because residential and work-use property is scattered around Yeouido and Dangsan, near the Assembly; Gangnam leads in value because the per-unit price of each property is different. The very fact that changing the yardstick changes who comes first shows that real estate is not only about ‘number’ but also about ‘location.’
The weight one person carries — value per holder
If holders and value diverge, the size of that divergence can be read in a single number. Divide declared value by the number of holding lawmakers and you get ‘how much, on average, one lawmaker holding property in that district is sitting on.’ Gangnam-gu is the heaviest at ₩2.51 billion per person. Songpa (₩2.38B) and Mapo (₩2.02B) follow, with Yongsan (₩1.77B) and Seocho (₩1.74B) below. Yeongdeungpo, by contrast, comes to just ₩0.42 billion per person. The per-person gap between Yeongdeungpo, where the most lawmakers gather, and Gangnam, where value is heaviest, is about six-fold. Wearing the same label of ‘property-holding lawmaker,’ the asset weight one person carries spreads up to six times by district.
By value, the upper tier separates
Peel back one more layer of the map and a tier of ‘Gangnam·Seocho and the rest of the upper group’ appears. Add the top two by value, Gangnam (₩98.0B) and Seocho (₩73.1B), and they total ₩171.2 billion — 25.8% of the nationwide district total. Two districts hold a quarter of everything. Add Songpa and the ‘Gangnam three’ reach ₩221.3 billion, 33.3%; the top four by value (Gangnam, Seocho, Mapo, Songpa) reach ₩271.6 billion, 40.9%.
The Songpa-Mapo divergence is also worth noting. Songpa has more holdings (48) than Mapo (32), yet their values are nearly equal — ₩50.1B against ₩50.4B. Songpa leads by count but ties by value, meaning Mapo’s per-unit price is heavier. Districts that look similar by number of holdings can sit in different tiers once ranked by value.
Why this ranking matters
The conventional wisdom around lawmakers’ wealth tends to fixate on ‘how many you own,’ because multiple-home ownership is the easiest indicator to see. But what decides the weight of an asset is not count alone; location matters as well. This value-sorted map shows that the worth of lawmakers’ real estate is concentrated around specific coordinates — Gangnam and Seocho. The question of who holds assets that may gain value simply by being held is clearer on a value map than on a tally of holdings.
A summary table keeps ‘how much in total’ and erases ‘where.’ Place each filing on its district by location and rank by value, and the concentration that the totals hid comes into view. The fact that Yeongdeungpo leads by number of holders while Gangnam leads by value is also a warning: the same population yields different conclusions depending on the ruler you pick up. Gangnam’s ₩98 billion is not merely a big number but a value that shows where the center of gravity of lawmakers’ real estate sits. Not how many, but where — the moment you answer that question, the terrain of lawmakers’ assets looks different.
Method & source · Real-estate filings from the Public Officials’ Asset Disclosure (Public Service Ethics System) were summed by the district where each property sits. Declared value, holding-lawmaker counts, and holding counts use the disclosure’s own real-estate tallies (value in Korean won; totals rounded). Real-estate value is filed on an assessed-value basis and differs from actual transaction prices; a disclosure is a snapshot at that year. The ranking points to the tallied district, not to any particular lawmaker. Data tally · kookrator.