South Korea's R&D Investment Surpasses 100 Trillion Won for the First Time in History

Ministry of Science and ICT Announces 2021 National Statistics, Records 102.1352 Trillion KRW
9.7% Increase from Previous Year's 93.1 Trillion KRW
Private Companies Account for 76.4% with 78.04 Trillion KRW

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] It has been revealed that South Korea's total national research and development (R&D) investment amount surpassed 100 trillion won for the first time last year.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced this in the "Research and Development Activity Survey Results," which investigated and analyzed the status of R&D activities conducted in both public and private sectors in South Korea during 2021. This survey was conducted on a total of 73,326 institutions, including public research institutes, universities, and companies engaged in R&D activities. South Korea's total R&D expenditure in 2021 was 102.1352 trillion won, an increase of 9.0636 trillion won (9.7%) compared to the previous year (93.1 trillion won), marking the beginning of the 100 trillion won era. The ratio relative to the gross domestic product (GDP) was also 4.96%, maintaining a world second-place level following Israel.

South Korea's R&D investment was led by the private sector, including companies, with private and foreign investments amounting to 78.0403 trillion won, accounting for 76.4% of the total R&D expenditure. By stage, 15.1002 trillion won (14.8%) was invested in basic research, 21.4704 trillion won (21%) in applied research, and 65.5647 trillion won (64.2%) in development research, indicating that research activities were centered on development research. This proportion of basic research is similar to that of the United States (15.1%) and Japan (12.3%), but lower than France (22.7%) and the United Kingdom (18.3%).

In 2021, the total number of researchers in South Korea was 586,666, with full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers numbering 470,728, ranking fourth in the world (fifth the previous year) after China, the United States, and Japan. The number of researchers per 1,000 economically active population was 16.7, and the number of researchers per 1,000 population was 9.1, both maintaining a world-leading level.

Looking only at the corporate sector, total corporate R&D expenditure was 80.8076 trillion won (public research institutes 12 trillion won, universities 9.3 trillion won), accounting for 79.1% of total R&D expenditure. The research workforce numbered 429,465 (public research institutes 42,566, universities 114,635), accounting for 73.2% of all researchers.

Notably, this was concentrated among the top 10 companies by sales. They accounted for 47.1% of total corporate R&D expenditure and 20.1% of total corporate researchers, with these figures increasing annually.

This survey also separately analyzed the impact of government R&D support on self-investment and changes in research personnel over five years (2017?2021) for companies that first conducted R&D in 2017. As a result, companies that participated in government R&D projects showed a 2.57% increase in self-funded R&D expenditure, which was 2.2 percentage points higher than companies that did not (0.37%), and a higher increase rate in research personnel (0.09%), indicating that government R&D investment had a positive effect on companies as well.

The results of this survey are provided to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and used as statistical data on R&D activities by country. Detailed results can be found through the National Science and Technology Knowledge Information Service.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.