Korea’s GDP growth ranked 107th in world last year: CIA

South Korea’s GDP growth ranked 107th in the world last year and eighth among OECD countries, according to the CIA’s The World Factbook on Wednesday.

The nation’s GDP growth marked 3.6 percent last year. Qatar topped the list of countries with GDP growth of 18.8 percent, followed by Mongolia (17.3 percent), Turkmenistan (14.7 percent), Ghana (13.6 percent), East Timor (10.6 percent), Panama (10.6 percent) and Iraq (9.9 percent).

Among developed countries, Turkey came in first with GDP growth of 8.5 percent, followed by Estonia (7.6 percent), Chile (5.9 percent), Israel (4.7 percent), Poland (4.4 percent) and Sweden (4 percent). Advanced countries like the U.S. (1.7 percent), France (1.7 percent), U.K. (0.7 percent) and Germany (3.1 percent) showed weak growth due to the financial crisis. The PIIGS nations ― Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain ― marked the lowest GDP growth. Greece was at the end of the line with -6.9 percent; Portugal, -1.5 percent; Italy, 0.4 percent; Ireland, 0.3 percent; and Spain, 0.7 percent.

Korea came in 7th place in terms of exports, which marked $556.5 billion last year. It was 9th place in imports with $524.4 billion.

China topped the list for exports with $1.94 trillion and the U.S. ranked first in imports with $2.23 trillion.

By Park Min-young  (claire@heraldcorp.com)