South Korea Economy

The World Bank Indicators show that the national rate of growth in the period between 1997 and 2003 was 0.7%, while the world average was of 1%. In the 70’s, the South Korean economy was based mostly in industries like automotive and the heavy industry. The country’s GDP has been growing up until 1990, when it began to slow down, as it had matured. The financial crisis in Asia that began in the year 1997 weakened the South Korean model. In 1999 the country’s economy began recovering and continued to grow until 2001 when, due to exports that were falling and the global economy slowing down, the economy stopped growing as much.

Industry and services cover bigger parts of the country’s GDP: 36%, respectively 60%. South Korea is the biggest IT nation in the world, with the ‘National ITA Project’, over US and Japan. It is also the most wired country on the globe, with a highly developed telecommunication technology. In the present, the government began investing in the industry of robotics, trying to make South Korea the ‘World's Number 1 Robotics Nation’.

Three percent of the total South Korean GDP is covered by agriculture. The country is covered mostly by mountains, making cultivation very hard. Urban areas have been growing, leaving less land to be cultivated. Nowadays South Korea imports to satisfy its nutritional needs. The country produces vegetables and fruit, rice, barley, milk, eggs, fish and root crops.

The agriculture sector is providing less than it used to, as industry has taken over: telecommunications, shipbuilding, steel, electrical products, petrochemicals, manufacturing, motor vehicles and mining. The service sector includes hotels, public bath houses, insurance, services related to health, laundries. Cities are high in technology, especially from the point of view of entertainment: billiards, game rooms and ping-pong tables.

South Korea is not rich in natural resources. It needs to import coal and crude petroleum in order to supply its manufacturing sector. KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) used to provide electric power. In 1961, it was replaced by KECO and in 1987 production reached 73,992 million kwhr. Nuclear power is provided in South Korea by its nuclear plant near Pusan, the Kori Number One, which has been working since 1997. South Korea imports mostly oil, food, machinery and base metals. It exports computers, cellular phones, machinery, steel, ships, automobiles, semiconductors and petrochemicals. The most important trade partners are Japan, the United States of America and Saudi Arabia.