Crude Steel
South Korean crude steel production ranked fifth in the world, rising from sixth place to beat Russia as last year's crude steel production exceeded 70 million tons.
However, the increase rate of last year's production quantity recorded 7.5 percent, which is the highest among major countries surpassing 10 million tons of production, resulting in oversupply.
According to the 2014 World Crude Steel Production Performances reported by World Steel Association (WSA) on Jan. 25, last year's global crude steel production amounted to 1.662 billion tons, up by 1.2 percent from a year ago.
By country, China ranked first with 822.7 million tons in production, followed by Japan (110.7 million tons), the U.S. (88.3 million tons), India (83.2 million tons), and South Korea (71 million tons). Although South Korea placed sixth following Russia in 2013, it beat Russia and ranked fifth last year.
In terms of production increase rate, South Korea recorded 7.5 percent, while China recorded only 0.9 percent compared to the previous year, Japan 0.1 percent, the U.S. 1.7 percent, and India 2.3 percent. South Korea made the highest increase rate among major production countries, with over 10 million tons of crude steel production.
As a result, the country’s share in world crude steel production rebounded to 4.3 percent last year, which decreased to 4.0 percent in 2013 from 4.4 percent in 2012.
China's share was close to half of the total world production by 49.5 percent, followed by Japan with 6.7 percent, the U.S. with 5.3 percent, and India with 5.0 percent.