South Korea’s service industry has witnessed rapid growth in many aspects, including scale of economy and employment, over the past five years, outperforming the manufacturing sector.
The number of employees working for 330 listed companies in the country’s seven major service industries like tourism, education, medical service, finance, and software, surpassed 274,760 last year, up 46.5 percent from 197,500 in 2009, according to corporate researcher chaebul.com.
The income of service industry workers also set a notable figure at 13.3 trillion won ($13.06 billion) last year, up 61.9 percent from 8.2 trillion won in 2009.
The non-service sector has taken a slower pace in growth compared with the service area in the same period. The number of employees in the non-service sector increased 36.1 percent to 1.28 million last year from 944,260 in 2009.
The income of these employees recorded a 35.2 percent increase to 93 trillion won last year from 68.8 trillion in 2009.
