SEOUL, KOREA - Korea's innovative capability among Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development member countries was ranked eighth, up one notch from last year. The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning and the Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning said this on January 27.

 

Since 2006, KISTEP has published annually the international comparison of science and technology innovativeness based on R&D investment spending, organizational capabilities, and human resource management levels.

 

For this year's evaluation, Korea was ranked No. 1 in terms of R&D investment share in the GDP from second last year and No. 2 in terms of government R&D budget in the total GDP from last year's fifth. As for science and technology personnel numbers for every 10,000 persons, Korea climbed up one notch to fourth from fifth last year.

 

In contrast, Korea was ranked at the bottom in other evaluation categories such as intellectual property protection (25th), attitude toward new culture (25th), per-R&D staff citation index (29th), and entrepreneurship (15th).

 

Korea has gained steadily since 2009 when it was ranked 12th, followed by 11th in 2010, 10th in 2011, and 9th in 2012. The countries at the top included the United States, Switzerland, and Japan, followed by Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and Finland.