South Korea
South Korea in numbers
39 measures of South Korea from 1789 to 2025, each charted year by year with where it comes from. Where a source publishes projections, they run on to 2100, drawn apart from the estimates.
Every measure
Health
People
Economy
Education
Politics
Conflict
Military
- Military spending2.6% of GDP in 2025
- Military spending in US dollars$48.9B in 2025
- Military spending per person$924 in 2025
- Military share of state spending10.8% of government spending in 2025
- Armed forces personnel569,000 people in 2020
- National power2% of world capability in 2022
- Armed forces, share of workers2.01% of the labour force in 2020
- Arms imports222 million TIV in 2025
- Arms exports2.02 billion TIV in 2025
Climate
Technology and environment
Compare South Korea with…
- South Korea vs India
- South Korea vs China
- South Korea vs United States
- South Korea vs Indonesia
- South Korea vs Pakistan
- South Korea vs Nigeria
- South Korea vs Brazil
- South Korea vs Bangladesh
- South Korea vs Russia
- South Korea vs Ethiopia
- South Korea vs Mexico
- South Korea vs Japan
- South Korea vs Egypt
- South Korea vs Philippines
- South Korea vs Congo - Kinshasa
- South Korea vs Vietnam
- South Korea vs Iran
- South Korea vs Türkiye
- South Korea vs Germany
- South Korea vs Thailand
- South Korea vs Tanzania
- South Korea vs United Kingdom
- South Korea vs France
- South Korea vs South Africa
- South Korea vs Italy
- South Korea vs Kenya
- South Korea vs Myanmar (Burma)
- South Korea vs Colombia
- South Korea vs Sudan
- South Korea vs Spain
- South Korea vs Argentina
- South Korea vs Canada
- South Korea vs Saudi Arabia
- South Korea vs Poland
- South Korea vs Malaysia
- South Korea vs Australia
- South Korea vs North Korea
- South Korea vs Netherlands
- South Korea vs Cambodia
- South Korea vs Belgium
- South Korea vs United Arab Emirates
- South Korea vs Papua New Guinea
- South Korea vs Sweden
- South Korea vs Israel
- South Korea vs Austria
- South Korea vs Switzerland
- South Korea vs Singapore
- South Korea vs Ireland
Good to know
- Sources: UN, Gapminder and UN IGME, WHO/UNICEF, IHME, World Bank, IMF, UNESCO, Our World in Data, V-Dem, UCDP, SIPRI, IISS, Correlates of War, ERA5, CMIP6, EDGAR, ITU and FAO. Each measure’s page names its own and what it counts.
- Values are drawn on today’s borders. Years without a published value are left empty, never filled in.
- 2 measures are climate model output, marked as modelled: not measurements.
How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Countries through time