South Korea's Digital Competitiveness Ranks 6th Among 64 Countries Worldwide... Climbs 2 Steps

Swiss IMD Evaluation Results Announced
Analysis of Future Readiness, Technology, and Knowledge Sectors

South Korea ranked 6th out of 64 countries worldwide in this year's digital competitiveness evaluation, rising two places from the previous year.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 30th that South Korea ranked 6th among 64 countries in the '2023 World Digital Competitiveness Ranking' released by the Swiss International Institute for Management Development (IMD). This marks a two-step improvement from last year.

Since 2017, IMD has been assessing and publishing the digital competitiveness of countries by measuring 54 detailed indicators across 9 sectors in 3 main areas: future readiness, technology, and knowledge, focusing on adaptability to digital technologies.

Among countries, the United States, which was 2nd last year, took 1st place, while Denmark, which was 1st last year, ranked 4th. In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore ranked 3rd, China 19th, and Japan 32nd.

South Korea ranked 6th overall and 2nd among 27 countries with populations over 20 million, following the United States.

Looking at each area, South Korea's rankings improved in all three major fields of future readiness, technology, and knowledge compared to last year. In the future readiness category, it ranked 1st out of 64 countries (up from 2nd), 12th in technology (up from 13th), and 10th in knowledge (up from 16th).

In the future readiness area, rankings rose in indicators such as attitude toward globalization, reflecting social awareness of globalization (11th to 7th), utilization of big data and analytics (34th to 31st), public-private partnership (46th to 40th), and cybersecurity (28th to 24th).

However, unusually, some items such as corporate agility (16th to 28th), software piracy (20th to 20th), and personal data protection laws (33rd to 33rd) saw rankings decline or stagnate.

In the technology sector, rankings improved in intellectual property rights (37th to 28th), national credit rating (17th to 16th), communication technology (12th to 11th), and mobile broadband subscriptions (15th to 12th).

However, within the technology sector, rankings were relatively low in regulatory and capital conditions. Rankings dropped compared to the previous year in immigration law (29th to 46th), financial and fiscal services (47th to 50th), venture capital (35th to 44th), and telecommunications investment (15th to 23rd).

Meanwhile, in the knowledge sector, rankings rose in international experience of talent (59th to 51st), employee training (34th to 23rd), and robotics in education and research and development (7th to 4th). Rankings declined in female degree holders (20th to 21st) and female researchers (53rd to 55th) compared to last year.

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