One-person households will outnumber nuclear families and two-person households by 2035, Statistics Korea forecasts. By then, single households are expected to represent 34 percent of the population and two-person households only 23 percent, with nuclear families making up a mere 20 percent.

More and more young people get married later for a variety of reasons, which extends the time they spend living alone. More men than women between the ages of 20 and 40 live alone.

But among the elderly, women living alone outnumber men because women tend to live longer than their husbands.