Signal Korea ranks second in R&D intensity but lags in the quality and commercialisation of results

Summary

The government cites KISTEP data showing that Korea spent 5.0 percent of GDP on research and development in 2023. That ratio ranks second in the world after Israel at 6.4 percent and well above the OECD average of 2.7 percent. By contrast, the outcomes of that spending rank lower, at 15th for intellectual property royalties, 10th for industrial value added, 12th for SCI papers and 11th for citations. The government reads the gap as evidence that impactful results and commercialisation lag behind the scale of inputs. It connects this weakness to Korea's difficulty in leading innovation in frontier science that cannot simply be imitated.