CM December 2023

COUNTRY FOCUS
AUTHOR – Adam Bernstein
Korean Peninsula; a point that the North
Korean Government would disagree with.
South Korea, post ceasefire, allied with
the US which is still the case today; North
Korea, however, tied its future to the
Soviet Union and communist bloc, and
subsequently Russia – more so following
the invasion of Ukraine.
The country is largely mountainous and
was formed from prior volcanic activity.
While activity has ceased South Korea
suffers tectonic movements and strong
earthquakes. With four distinct seasons
and a temperate climate, it has enough
rainfall to sustain agriculture and is less
vulnerable to typhoons.
As for population, according to World
Bank data growth has been on a gentle
upward incline from 25.01m in 1960
to 42.87m in 1990 and 51.74m in 2021.
Interestingly, Worldpopulationreview.
com, in extrapolating data from the UN,
believes that South Korea’s population
can be best shown as a bell curve with
peak expected in 2023. It also states that
the population should decline at the same
rate that it grew by so that by 2053 it'll sit
at 44.4m and 30.2m by 2083.
But for the moment, considering its
population size and landmass South Korea
is densely populated with 516 people per
km2 (it’s ranked 15th reckons the United
Nations World Population Prospects). In
comparison, North Korea is ranked 49th
with 217 people per km2 and the UK is
34th with 277 people per km2.
As to where most live, GeoNames
names the largest population centre as
Seoul (10.3m) which is followed by Busan
(3.6m), Incheon (2.6m), Daegu (2.5m),
But beyond car
manufacturing,
Invest Korea points
to ten Korean car
parts companies
being listed on the
world's top 100
automotive parts
producers in 2021
(by sales). These
firms achieved
sales of $65.1bn
and accounted for
8.2 percent of the
sales of top 100
parts producers.
Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com /December 2023 / PAGE 35
Daejeon (1.4m), Gwangju (1.4m), Suwon
(1.2m), Goyang-si (1m) and Ulsan (0.9m).
There are another 16 cities with more
than 500,000 residents, 38 with 100,000 to
500,000, and 11 with 40,000 to 100,000.
It’s notable that, as the Asian News
Network commented in March 2023 that
there’s an imbalance in the ratio of male to
female at birth in 20222 with 104.7 males
to every 100 females. This, however, is
the nearest to gender balance that South
Korea has witnessed since records began
to be kept in 1990; back then then were
116.5 males to every 100 females born.
The network also wrote that ‘extreme
preference for boys has led to social
problems and conflict within the family,
in some cases, leading to a divorce over
the lack of a son’ and that even the written
law in Korea has outlined specific roles
designated for males. It added, however,
that in a 2021 survey by Hankook
Research, 57 percent of the respondents
said they need at least one daughter.
Economy
Santander Trade says that South Korea
ranks 12th among the world’s largest
economic powers and 4th in Asia in
2023. It noted that ‘South Korea is famous
for its spectacular rise from one of
the poorest countries in the world to a
developed, high-income country in just
one generation’ and that during the global
financial crisis of 2007-2008, the country
maintained a stable economy and even
experienced economic growth during the
peak of the crisis.
And World Bank data bears this out
noting that GDP per capita has grown
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