![Main image of OECD report cover [Source = OECD]](https://wimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202510/31/news-p.v1.20251031.edd359dca2464ed893d054165f5b9434_P1.png)
According to OECD evaluation, Korea has the world’s second-largest concentration of R&D after Israel, making R&D investments of 5% of its gross home product (GDP). However, regardless of such monumental funding, it has been discovered that innovation efficiency is going through issues resembling concentration in massive corporations and the metropolitan space. Compared to main nations, girls’s participation in science and expertise is low, and there’s a scarcity of manpower in the semiconductor subject.
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on the thirty first, the OECD formally printed the “2025 Science and Technology Innovation Outlook 2025” report at the 127th General Assembly of the Science and Technology Policy Committee (CSTP). The Science and Technology Innovation Outlook is a consultant coverage report that analyzes tendencies and modifications in science and expertise innovation in main nations, together with member nations, and is printed each different yr.
According to the report’s evaluation, Korea’s R&D concentration in 2023 was 5 p.c, adopted by Israel (6.3 p.c), which ranks first in the OECD. The development charge of R&D spending additionally exceeded the OECD common at 3.7%. In explicit, the OECD positively assessed that the Korean authorities makes use of tax advantages to current R&D instructions, resembling growing the tax credit score charge by designating “national strategic technologies” and “new growth and basic technologies” (273 in 14 areas). In addition, a step-by-step funding technique that compresses the preliminary six duties to one over 5 years, like the ‘Alkimist Program’, was additionally cited as an innovation instance.
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However, the report additionally clearly identified the shadow confronted by Korea’s “K-innovation.” One of the most critical issues is manpower. “South Korea’s ambitious semiconductor initiative with the U.S., EU and Japan is facing ‘significant obstacles’ and one of the reasons is ‘related human capital shortages,'” the report stated. The lack of variety in R&D personnel was additionally revealed as a limitation. The proportion of feminine inventors in the patent utility subject in Korea was about 22%, which remained comparatively low inside the OECD together with the Czech Republic and Japan.
At the identical time, the concentration of R&D efficiency was additionally identified as a key process for Korea to overcome. The OECD formally assessed that Korea’s excessive scientific and technological achievements want to unfold all through society, stressing that innovation needs to be alleviated from being concentrated in “some companies and regions.” This signifies that the fruits of monumental R&D funding should unfold past massive corporations and the metropolitan space to SMEs and communities as an entire.
The authorities can also be working measures to entice and foster human sources to clear up these issues. The “K-Tech Pass,” which will probably be launched in 2025, is a system that helps overseas skills in high-tech fields resembling semiconductors, secondary batteries, and bio to enter and settle when signing employment contracts with home corporations. It can also be working a ‘Brain Pool Korea’ venture to entice glorious abroad scientists. In order to domesticate inner human sources, the “WIST” has been supporting career-interrupted feminine researchers’ return to R&D (roughly 20 million received/15,000 USD per individual) and management coaching via the “WIST” since 2011.
Meanwhile, the report confirmed that the absolute quantity of R&D spending is fiercely competing for supremacy, with the U.S. and China overwhelmingly rating first and second. As of 2023 (based mostly on buying energy parity), the U.S. spent $956 billion (about 1,200 trillion received) to stay the world’s No. 1, adopted intently by China with $917 billion (about 1,150 trillion received). China’s R&D spending, which was 72% of the U.S. 10 years in the past (2013), narrowed the hole to 96% in 2023. This is 62% greater than the complete expenditure of the 27 EU nations.