The population of Seoul decreased for a second consecutive year in 2012 to around 10.4 million, according to statistics released by the city government on Tuesday.

Around 10.6 million people lived in the capital city in 2010 and 10.5 million in 2011.

The decline was due to a bigger outflow of citizens than inflow to the city, with 487,000 moving in and 596,000 people moving out. The number of births was 95,000, and 41,000 died last year.

The foreign population decreased by 86,000 from a year before to 247,000.

The number of ethnic Koreans decreased by 21 percent, the largest decline among the foreign population, followed by Americans by 18.7 percent, and Russians by 10.4 percent.

Around 32,000 ethnic Koreans left the city when their visas expired.

Meanwhile, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese residents increased by 17.1 percent, 10.5 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.

While the overall population shrank, the elderly population, those aged 65 or over, increased by 68,000 from the year before to 1.1 million.

The number of people in the age group surpassed 1 million in 2010, and now one out of 10 people is aged 65 or older.

Those aged 14 or under accounted for 1.3 million, or 13.1 percent of the population; and the economically productive population, people aged 15 to 64, made up 7.8 million, or 76 percent of Seoul’s overall population.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)