Korea Gets Middling Score for Innovation

Korea earned a middling score for innovation in rankings by the organizers of the world's biggest consumer electronics show, despite its reputation as an IT powerhouse.

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On the International Innovation Scorecard released recently by the U.S. Consumer Technology Association, the organizer of the Consumer Electronics Show, Korea ranked a poor 24th among 61 countries.

The top 16 countries -- including Canada, Estonia, Germany, Israel, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. -- were crowned Innovation Champions for their effective policies in innovation support and deregulation.

The scorecard grades countries from A to F across 28 indicators like entrepreneurial activity, research and development investment, and tax friendliness. It was published in time with this year's CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 8-11.

Korea got a clean fail in the ride-sharing category amid massive protests from taxi drivers against Kakao's new ride-sharing app and a ban on Uber.

Eight other countries including Hungary and Greece scored an F in the category as their governments struggle to keep up with new developments.

In the short-term rentals category, which covers regulations restricting Airbnb and similar online accommodation-sharing businesses, Korea scored a D since people can register homes in urban areas as B&Bs or guest houses if they run them for less than half the year. Only Rwanda with a clean F ranked lower than Korea.

The report urged Korea to rethink its approach to the sharing economy.

The country scored a C in the category of "unicorns", or domestic companies founded within the past decade "that have achieved an actual or implied market valuation of at least US $1 billion".

Korea has only three such companies -- Coupang, Yello Mobile and L&P Cosmetics -- in stark contrast to the U.S.' 133 and China's 120. The U.K. managed to nurture 12, India nine and Germany seven.

But Korea scored a clean A, alongside Israel, by spending a world-beating 4.2 percent of GDP on research and development. Next came Switzerland with 3.4 percent, Sweden with 3.3 percent and Austria with 3.1 percent.

In entrepreneurial activity, Korea scored a B on the strength of a government fund of W8.7 trillion for start-ups.

Japan and China also ranked surprisingly low at 31st and 33rd because the scorecard is heavily biased against regulations of any kind.