South Korea's research and development spending was the fifth largest among OECD nations in 2018, the country's science ministry said Wednesday.
South Korea spent 85.7 trillion won ($73.3 billion) on R&D activities last year, up 8.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.
In terms of the proportion of R&D spending to gross domestic product, South Korea was the leading nation in the world, the ministry said, reaching 4.81 percent in 2018, up 0.26 percentage point from the year before.
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(Yonhap) |
The country's private sector spent a combined 65.7 trillion won on R&D activities last year, up 9.4 percent from a year earlier, while the comparable figure for the public sector was 18.3 trillion won, according to the ministry. The remainder came from foreign investors.
The ministry said the country had a total of 514,170 researchers last year, up 31,374 from the previous year, 71.6 percent of whom work for private companies.
The number of female researchers increased 7.9 percent on-year to 104,728 in 2018, accounting 20.4 percent of the total. (Yonhap)
