The number of students heading outside Seoul has surpassed the number of students coming into the capital for the first time. Test prep service provider Hanul Education and the Chosun Ilbo analyzed attendance figures at 1,182 elementary, junior and senior high schools for 2008-2010 and found that 55,610 students left Seoul to study in elsewhere in the country last year, while 53,341 students came to the capital.

This trend appears to be mainly due to students who transfer to less competitive schools outside the capital to boost their grades and thus get into good universities.

The difference between students who left and students who came to Seoul dropped into negative territory last year, when school grades started accounting for a larger portion of university entrance criteria. Lim Sung-ho of Hanul Education said, "In the past, students who lived outside Seoul moved to the capital when they were about to graduate from elementary schools to prepare for entrance to special-purpose high schools, which take many students to top universities in Seoul, but since last year more left the capital as they sought to get better school grades."

With high school grades accounting for 60 percent of the university entrance exam, more and more youngsters leave Seoul for less competitive schools in rural areas where they can get better grades, according to experts. This is the first time since the end of the Korean War that students who leave Seoul outnumber those coming to the capital.