Great Strides
The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry announced on March 16 that South Korea’s GDP increased more than 85-fold from US$19.54 billion to US$1.66433 trillion, and GDP per capita increased more than 57-fold from US$563.3 to US$32,236.8 from 1974 to 2022.
“In that period, the contribution of corporate investment to GDP growth was 20 percent on average while the figure was 10.8 percent in the United States, 16.6 percent in Japan, 10.7 percent in the United Kingdom, 12.1 percent in Germany, 11.6 percent in France, 10.7 percent in Canada and 10.3 percent in Italy,” it said.
In 1974, South Korea’s top trade partners were the United States (33.4 percent), Japan (30.9 percent) and Germany (5.4 percent). In 2022, they were China (22.8 percent), the United States (16.1 percent) and Vietnam (8.9 percent). In that period, South Korea’s main export items changed from textiles (36 percent), consumer electronics (10 percent) and steel (5 percent) to semiconductors (13 percent), automobiles (11 percent) and petroleum (9 percent).
South Korea’s annual exports increased from US$4.46 billion to US$683.58 billion from 1974 to 2022. The global market share of its products rose from 0.53 percent (39th in the world) to 2.89 percent (seventh) from 1974 to 2021. In 2021, the share was 9.8 percent (fourth) in the global semiconductor market, 17.7 percent (second) in shipbuilding, 5.3 percent (fifth) in automotive, 9.9 percent (second) in petrochemical, 8.8 percent (third) in display and 4.7 percent (fourth) in steel.
South Korea’s R&D investment-to-GDP ratio rose from 0.42 percent to 4.96 percent from 1976 to 2021 to be second only to Israel’s. In 2021, South Korea’s total R&D investment was 102.1 trillion won (US$78.10 billion) and the private sector accounted for 76.4 percent of the total.