KITA Report Shows Seoul World’s No. 1 IT Power


By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Korea ranked first in the world in 11 social, economic and technology categories but was only 34th for quality of life.

The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) on Thursday reported Korea ranked first in the world for the proportion of science and engineering degree holders among total university graduates, the level of shipbuilding production and sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.


Korea was also the world’s leader in high-speed Internet penetration, textile exports and the production of thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays and code division multiple access products.

Korea’s performance in some other areas, however, is less impressive, with 35th place for indices for transparency and corruption, 34th for quality of life and 6th for inflation rate.

The statistics are from a report on Korea’s 207 various indices in economy, trade and society in 2004 compiled by the Korea International Trade Association. The data came from the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.

According to the report, 41 percent of degree holders with BAs, MAs and PhDs majored in science and engineering, the highest rate in the world. The percentage is much higher than Japan’s 29.2 percent and the U.S.’ 18 percent.

Women accounted for 13 percent of all lawmakers, giving Korea the ranking of 77th in the world, far lower than Rwanda’s 48.8 percent and Sweden’s 45.3 percent, which placed first and second respectively. However, this is huge progress considering that Korea was in 101st place with 5.5 percent during the 16th National Assembly.

As for major industries, Korea ranked 3rd for cell phone sales, 6th in car production, 12th in the number of registered cars, 4th in refrigerator production, 5th in washing machine output and 16th in beer production.

Korea demonstrated its strength in the information technology industry. The number of high-speed Internet subscribers ranked 1st with 21.3 people in every 100, followed by Hong Kong ‘s 14.6 and Canada with 11.5. In the share of Internet users against total population, Korea placed 2nd after Iceland, while the number of mobile phone subscribers out of 100 people gave the nation 29th spot.

The average life span was 74 years for 54th place. Korea also ranked 11th for nominal GDP, 12th in trade, 40th in exports per capita, 17th for service exports, 4th in foreign currency reserves and 3rd in the number of cases of dumping charges. A total of 77 Korean products captured the largest shares in world markets _ 13th place.

Korea was placed 23rd in terms of spending on education per student. Testifying to the intense passion for education, the nation was ranked 5th in the percentage of spending on education organizations. The country was 7th in R&D investment, 14th in the number of research papers on science and technology and 29th in the number of published research papers per 10,000 people.

While the number of students who study in the U.S. ranked 3rd after China, the nation was ranked 109th in the TOEFL-based English proficiency out of the 153 countries surveyed.

Among 500 companies selected by Fortune magazine, 11 Korean companies were listed and only Samsung was on the list of 100 global brands.

michelle@koreatimes.co.kr