South Korea ranked second among Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development economies in terms of research and development investment in the information, communication and technology businesses, a recent report showed.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Internet Economy Outlook 2012 released on Sunday showed that Korean companies in the ICT sectors invested 1.48 percent of the nation’s GDP in R&D.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy came in third after Finland, which invests 1.62 percent of its GDP in ICT business R&D, and Taiwan, which spends 1.52 percent of its GDP in the sector. Korea therefore comes in second among OECD nations as Taiwan is not a member country.

Only four countries, including Korea, Finland, Taiwan and Israel (1.14 percent) a invested more than 1 percent of the nations’ GDP in ICT R&D, according to the report.

The report said that while Taiwan, Finland, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Sweden focus on the manufacturing sector, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Israel and the U.K. put emphasis on the service sector. Here, about 1.36 percent of the GDP was invested in the manufacturing sector, which includes conglomerates such as Samsung Electronics, and about 0.13 percent in the service sector.

Among the total amount of R&D investment, ICT industries took up 53.1 percent in Korea, which was fourth among the surveyed nations. Taiwan invested the most, 73.5 percent, in the ICT industries; Finland 57.7 percent; and Greece 54.6 percent. On average, surveyed countries spent about 20 percent of the total R&D investment in the ICT industries.

By Park Min-young  (claire@heraldcorp.com)