Long View
The economic growth of South Korea for the past 10 years has not been so bad, compared to those of other OECD countries.
Korea’s economy grew at an average of 3.7 percent annually from 2005 to 2014, which is about 2.5 times higher than the average 1.5 percent for the 34-member OECD, placing the nation ranked 6th in the growth rate, according to a data released by the Paris-based international organization.
Chile ranked first with an average gross domestic product (GDP) increasing 4.2 percent during the period, followed by Turkey (4.2 percent), Israel (4.1 percent), Poland (3.9 percent) and Slovakia (3.8 percent). With the exception of Israel, which had a per capita GDP of US$30,404 in 2014, the remaining four states had a per capita GDP below US$20,000.
It means that Korea performed a pretty good economic growth by achieving per capita GDP at US$33,657 in 2014 among the countries with a per capita GDP exceeding US$30,000.
Further, it showed that Korea had kept a solid growth since the 2008 global financial crisis while many OECD member countries suffered a drastic drop in their economic growth. Korea grew at an annual average of 3.2 percent rate from 2009 to 2014, which was a 1.1 percentage point drop from the 4.3 percent average during the 2005-2008 period.
In contrast, growth of Chile, Turkey, Israel and Poland fell 1.4 to 2.2 percentage points. In particular, Slovakia, which showed an annual average 7.7 percent growth during the 2005-2008 period, plunged to a 1.2 percent growth, down 6.5 percent points during the 2009-2014 period.
For the decade, the US, Germany and Japan showed an annual average of 1.6 percent, 1.3 percent and 0.6 percent growth rate, respectively, while Portugal, Italy and Greece reported minus growth of 0.3 percent, 0.5 percent and 0.2 percent each.
In addition, most of economies of OECD countries stepped back before and after the global financial crisis in 2008. In particular, Finland (-8.3 percent), Japan (-5.5 percent) and the US (-2.8 percent) showed a sharp fall in their economic growth.
The number of countries whose economy never fell down to minus growth is just four including Korea, Poland, Israel and Australia.
Meanwhile, the Korean government predicted a 3.1 percent growth for 2015.