South Korea’s six major high-tech strategic industries have seen their shares in export markets plummet, losing ground to rival countries. The six strategic industries include semiconductors, displays, secondary batteries, future vehicles, biotech, and robotics.
The six industries’ exports in 2022 was US$186 billion, down 1.2% from US$188.4 billion in 2018, according to an analysis of the six major high-tech strategic industries’ market shares in export markets released by the Korea Enterprises Federation (KEF) on Jan 21. The share of the six industries’ exports in Korea’s total exports also declined from 31.1% in 2018 to 27.2% in 2022.
Despite this decline, the share of the six industries in Korea’s exports in 2022 (27.2%) was second only to Taiwan (48.1%) among the six major economies (Korea, the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and Taiwan), indicating that the six industries still account for a larger share of the Korean economy than its competitors.
However, the six industries’ share in export markets in 2022 stood at 6.5%, lower than that of China (14.1%), Germany (8.3%), Taiwan (8.1%) and the United States (7.6%).
This was a reversal of Korea’s rankings in export market shares from 2018 when Korea had the second highest share in export markets after China among the six countries. An export market share is the proportion of a country’s exports to the world’s exports and is the most basic measure of a country’s export competitiveness.
Korea’s share in the semiconductor export market was the second highest among the six countries after China (15.7%) and Taiwan (15.4%). But even global semiconductor exports increased by 31.8% from 2018, Korea’s semiconductor exports descended, resulting in a decline in its semiconductor export market share from 13.0% in 2018 to 9.4% in 2022. Taiwan’s export market share, on the other hand, surged from 11.2% to 15.4% during this period, eclipsing that of Korea.
In 2022, South Korea’s display export market share stood at 10.3%, second only to China’s 24.5% among the six export powerhouses. This is because both Korea’s and the world’s display exports decreased. However, Korea’s display export growth rate was relatively low compared to those of Germany, Taiwan, and the United States.