S. Korea's R&D ranked within top 10 worldwide

South Korea ranks among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of the proportion of gross domestic product allocated to research and development, a government report said Tuesday.

As of 2005, South Korea spent 24.15 trillion won (US$25.94 billion) or 2.99 percent of its annual GDP on R&D, the Ministry of Science and Technology said. The sum includes money spent by the government, the public sector, private businesses and labs.

This places it sixth or seventh in the world and higher than many industrialized countries like the United States (2.69 percent), Germany (2.49 percent) and France (2.16 percent), although lower than the 3.13 percent spent by Japan.

In addition, the annual increase in the government's R&D budget, which reached 14.2 percent from 2005 to 2006, exceeds the overall budget gain of 5.9 percent for the same period, indicating the importance of this sector. The R&D budget for this year hit 8.9 trillion won.

Reflecting such growth, the number of patents requested by South Korean scientists and engineers under the Patent Cooperation Treaty reached 4,747 this year, the sixth largest amount in the world. The total number of papers by South Korean authors cited by the global science citation index reached 23,048, or 14th worldwide.

In 2005, South Korea's technology exports reached $1.62 billion, representing an annual increase of 14.7 percent, as quality improvements spurred overseas demand.

Seoul, Dec. 19 (Yonhap News)