The biggest group of students admitted to Korea's three most prestigious universities, Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei, came from the upscale Gangnam district of Seoul. Nine out of 100 high school graduates from the area were admitted to the top three schools.

Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Kwon Young-kil's office on Monday released data showing that Gangnam was followed by Seocho, another upscale district in Seoul, at 8.95 percent. No students from 19 rural and fishing counties out of 232 cities, counties and municipal districts were admitted to any of the top three universities in academic year 2009.

Kwon's office said it compiled the data to establish a correlation between housing prices and regions where students at the top three universities come from. "It's statistically substantiated that the most important variable in the number of students at the top three universities is housing prices, which imply the amount of assets or income," a spokesman for Kwon said.

Among 16 metropolitan cities and provinces, Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Daejeon topped the list in terms of the number of freshmen at the three schools at 3.82 percent, 1.95 percent and 1.89 percent. The numbers of freshmen from Seoul was 4,242 and from Gyeonggi 2,452. Their combined number accounts for 60.1 percent of the entire freshman quotas at those schools. Simply put, six out of 10 freshmen at Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei come from the Seoul metropolitan area.