South Korea

Economy

EconomyMain article: Graphical depiction of Korea's product exports in 28 color-coded categories

South Korea's ranks nominal and purchasing power parity GDP in the world, identifying it as one of the . It is a with a and is the most industrialized member country of the . South Korean brands such as and are internationally famous.

With its massive investment in education has taken the country from mass illiteracy to a major international technological powerhouse. The country's national economy benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with the one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. South Korea's economy was one of the world's fastest-growing from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, and South Korea is still one of the fastest-growing developed countries in the 2000s, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, the other three . South Koreans refer to this growth as the . The South Korean economy is heavily dependent on international trade, and in 2014, South Korea was the and in the world.

South Korea hosted the in its capital city, Seoul, in November 2010. The two-day summit was expected to boost South Korea's economy by 31 trillion won, or 4% of South Korea's 2010 GDP, in economic effects, and create over 160,000 jobs in South Korea. It may also help improve the country's sovereign .

Despite the South Korean economy's high growth potential and apparent structural stability, the country suffers damage to its credit rating in the stock market because of the belligerence of North Korea in times of deep military crises, which has an adverse effect on South Korean financial markets. The compliments the resilience of the South Korean economy against various economic crises, citing low state debt and high fiscal reserves that can quickly be mobilized to address financial emergencies. Although it was severely harmed by the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, the South Korean economy managed a rapid recovery and subsequently tripled its GDP.

Furthermore, South Korea was one of the few developed countries that were able to avoid a during the . Its economic growth rate reached 6.2 percent in 2010 (the fastest growth for eight years after significant growth by 7.2 percent in 2002), a sharp recovery from economic growth rates of 2.3% in 2008 and 0.2% in 2009, when the global financial crisis hit. The unemployment rate in South Korea also remained low in 2009, at 3.6%.

The following list includes the largest South Korean companies by revenue in 2013 who are all listed as part of the :