Leading business conglomerates South Korea 2023, by revenue

As of May 2023, Samsung Group was the largest business group in South Korea, with a revenue of around 418.8 trillion South Korean won. Samsung is the biggest South Korean family-owned conglomerate, also known as chaebols. Chaebols are a major contributor to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), accounting for nearly 60 percent of the GDP in 2021.

Rising start-up scene in South Korea

A new trend is noticeable among South Korean businesses and enterprises. Start-ups are becoming more common than before. In 2020, start-ups with less than 2 years of business age made up over 40 percent of the existing South Korean start-ups. Looking at the survival rate of new businesses, the low survival rate compared to other OECD countries does not encourage entrepreneurs to start a new business. An online survey found that more than half of the respondents were afraid or nervous when thinking about starting a new business. Starting a new business means facing a lot of challenges. Most start-up founders identified the difficulty of obtaining investment due to determination and recognition of company valuation as the leading obstacle.

The key industry of South Korea’s economy

The manufacturing industry is by far the most valuable sector contributing to the GDP of South Korea. It also showed a higher growth rate than the country’s GDP. Over the past decades, the manufacturing sector has been South Korea’s growth engine for its rapid economic development. Despite the great importance of this industry, it contributed fewer percentage points to the economic growth in South Korea in recent years, even showing a negative figure in 2019. 2021 recorded the highest figure of the past decade with 1.7 percentage points.