SEOUL, KOREA - A study said Korea is superior in industries such as electric, electronic, shipbuilding, and textile vis-a-vis Japan. In contrast, Korea is lagging behind Japan in the areas of general machinery and automotive.

 

According to a report "Trend of Korea-Japan Export Competitiveness" published by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on March 10, the revealed comparative advantage of Korea's electric and electronic industry for the past ten years was 1.72 (as of 2012), much higher than that for Japan (1.38).

 

Korea's competitiveness in the electric and electronic industry has been consistently maintained for the last ten years, with its revealed comparative advantage index way ahead of that for Japan (1.83 vs. 1.53 in 2002 and 1.86 vs. 1.51 in 2007). The revealed comparative advantage is an index used in international economics for calculating the relative advantage or disadvantage of a certain country in a certain class of goods or services as evidenced by trade flows.

 

The index in the shipbuilding industry for Korea was 7.73 (as of 2012) compared to Japan's 3.12. The index for the textile sector was also higher for Korea than Japan (1.35 vs. 0.60). But when it comes to the automobile industry, Japan held much higher competitiveness against Korea (2.91 vs. 1.71). For 12 years since 2002, Korea has never been ahead of Japan in the auto industry (0.66 vs. 1.23 in 2002 and 1.64 vs. 2.83 in 2007). The situation was no different for general machinery which showed Korea's revealed comparative advantage index of 0.90 vis-a-vis Japan's 1.70.