Economic Growth / Economic Development Essay Sample

Economic Growth / Economic Development
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Describe South Korea with the use of statistics, describe and assess its level of development and its progress towards further economic development.
Do ensure that your answer distinguishes between the concepts of economic growth and economic development.
Economic Growth / Economic Development
Economic growth relates to increasing the productivity and income of a territory. Economic development focuses on measuring improvements in people's living standards, with first-world countries like Korea having high income per capita and low poverty levels. South Korea's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 3,958,190,758.62 current U.S. dollars on 1st January 1960 and had increased to 1,646,739,219,509.89 current U.S. dollars on 1st January 2019 (World Bank/ FRED, 2021). In the past six decades, South Korea has experienced tremendous economic growth and from being one of the poorest countries to be a top 30 economy in 2020 (World Bank/ FRED, 2021).
From 1960, the country's industrial sector grew fast, and South Korea focused on an export-led growth model. Since the end of the Korean War, South Korean economic growth has been tremendous in 1953, changing from a rural and agricultural-based economy to one of the most significant industrial powerhouses. The global demand for consumer electronics and the export of goods and services will affect the company's growth prospects, but there has been a focus on diversifying the economy. In 2020, the economic slowdown in the U.S. and China, the covid-19 pandemic, and a slowdown in domestic demand all affected growth negatively compared to 2019.
South Korea per capita income exceeded the $30,000 (GDP at current prices) per capita income, in 2017 and this is the level of income when countries tend to be a fully developed economy. Another approach is considering GDP per capita in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), which eliminates differences in the different countries' current price levels. Using the PPP, South Korea has already achieved higher th...