The economy of South Korea is a highly developed mixed economy. By nominal GDP, the economy was worth ₩2.24 quadrillion. It has the 4th largest economy in Asia and the 14th largest in the world as of 2024. South Korea is notable for its rapid economic development from an underdeveloped nation to a developed, high-income country in a few generations. This economic growth has been described as the Miracle on the Han River, which has allowed it to join the OECD and the G20. It is included in the group of Next Eleven countries as having the potential to play a dominant role in the global economy by the middle of the 21st century. Among OECD members, South Korea has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 15.5% of GDP. South Korea spends around 4.93% of GDP on advance research and development across various sectors of the economy.
Hyundai Group is a South Korean conglomerate founded by Chung Ju-yung. The group was founded in 1947 as a construction company. With government assistance, Chung and his family members rapidly expanded into various industries, eventually becoming South Korea's second chaebol. Chung Ju-yung was directly in control of the company until his death in 2001.
Daewoo also known as the Daewoo Group, was a major South Korean chaebol and automobile manufacturer.
Ulsan, officially the Ulsan Metropolitan City, is South Korea's seventh-largest metropolitan city and the eighth-largest city overall, with a population of over 1.1 million inhabitants. It is located in the south-east of the country, neighboring Busan to the south and facing Gyeongju to the north.
POSCO is a South Korean steel manufacturer headquartered in Pohang, South Korea. It had an output of 42,000,000 metric tons of crude steel in 2015, making it the world's sixth-largest steelmaker by this measure. In 2010, it was the world's largest steel manufacturing company by market value. Also, in 2012, it was named as the world's 146th-largest corporation by the Fortune Global 500.
The Busan-Ulsan Metropolitan Area, centered on the harbor cities of Busan and Ulsan, is the Republic of Korea's second-largest metropolitan area in terms of population and is the country's second-most developed region as well. It is also an industrial region for shipbuilding, international trade, and heavy industries, such as car making and chemical production.
SK Group is a South Korean multinational manufacturing and services conglomerate headquartered in Seoul. A chaebol, SK Group is second largest such conglomerate by revenue in South Korea, after Samsung Group. Through a number of subsidiaries, it is engaged in various businesses, including manufacture of chemicals and petrochemicals, semiconductors, flash memory and miscellaneous information technology, as well providing telecommunications services worldwide among its other less notable ventures.
Hyundai is a South Korean industrial conglomerate ("chaebol"), which was restructured into the following groups:
SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. SK Hynix is one of the world's largest semiconductor vendors.
Japan's major export industries include automobiles, consumer electronics, computers, semiconductors, copper, and iron and steel. Additional key industries in Japan's economy are petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, bioindustry, shipbuilding, aerospace, textiles, and processed foods.
Samsung Engineering Co., Ltd. is a Korean construction and project management (EPC&PM) company, it provides a full range of engineering services including feasibility studies, design, procurement, construction, and commissioning.
Hyundai Corporation is a South Korean company founded in 1976 as part of the Hyundai chaebol.
The automotive industry in South Korea is the fifth-largest in the world as measured by automobile unit production and also the sixth-largest by automobile export volume.
Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Digital City, Suwon, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol. As of 2020, Samsung has the world's eighth-highest brand value.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is currently the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, accounting for 70% of the group's revenue in 2012.
Samsung SDI Co., Ltd. is a battery and electronic materials manufacturer headquartered in Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. Samsung SDI operates its business with Energy Solutions and Electronic Materials segment. The Energy Solution segment manufactures rechargeable batteries used for IT device, automotive, and Energy Storage System (ESS) applications, and the Electronic Materials segment produces materials for semiconductors and displays. In the first half of 2022, Samsung SDI is ranked sixth in the world with a market share of 5 percent according to SNE research. In 2022, Samsung SDI started to build pilot line for solid-state batteries in the South Korean city of Suwon and began its first production from the very line in 2023.
BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., or Jingdongfang, is a Chinese electronic components producer founded in April 1993. Its core businesses are interface devices, smart IoT systems and smart medicine and engineering integration. BOE is one of the world's largest manufacturers of LCD, OLEDs and flexible displays.
South Korea is the world's third-largest producer of electronics after China and the United States, accounting for 6.8 percent of global production. South Korea's electronics industry ranked third by production last year, and fifth by consumption. As of 2017, South Korea's electronics industry recorded a production volume of $121.7 billion.
The KOSPI 200 is a subset of the KOSPI. It tends to be used to indicate the performance of the Korean stock market It covers about 93 percent of the KOSPI's market value, including the top 200 companies listed on the Korea Stock Exchange.
In South Korea, the semiconductor industry has continued to grow since the 1980s due to the heavy use of semiconductors in computers and other devices. South Korea held a 17.7 percent share in the global semiconductor market in 2022, and continued to be the second largest in the world for the 10th consecutive year since 2013.
