By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter


Foreign direct investment (FDI) in South Korea reached $7.69 billion last year, making the country the 16th largest investment destination among 195 countries.

Korea’s ranking surged by 11 notches from 2003 as FDI flow into Korea rose 103 percent, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said Friday in its annual world investment report.

China attracted the third largest amount of FDI last year with $61 billion, up from $54 billion a year ago, placed behind the United States with $96 billion and Britain with $78 billion, the UN report said.

But most FDI into the U.S. and Britain was due largely to increased merger and acquisitions activities rather than manufacturing and service sector investments.

China and Hong Kong accounted for two-thirds of $148 billion of the total FDI coming into the Asian region.

Meanwhile, South Korea ranked the world’s seventh-largest investor in research and development (R&D) projects in 2002.

The UN agency said that the country invested $13.8 billion in various R&D activities, up only $300 million from 1996. The figure was smaller than the $15.6 billion China spent in 2002 to advance its technological and scientific levels.

The U.S. was the largest R&D spender with a $276.2 billion investment, followed by Japan’s $133 billion and Germany’s $50.2 billion.

But in the corporate R&D sector, Korea ranked sixth as companies invested $10.4 billion to strengthen their industrial competitiveness and develop new technologies, while China placed seventh with $9.5 billion.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip marker, became the world’s 33rd largest corporate R&D spender with $2.74 billion.

leehs@koreatimes.co.kr