Where does South Korea stand on Agency?
This page reads one capability from the published data and is recomputed with every release. It separates what South Korea does, which makes the score, from what the country has, which sits beside the score, and places the country among the 10 countries at the nearest income. The text describes the data and recommends no policy.
What does the score rest on?
The Agency score is the equal-weight mean of the positions of four indicators on a 0 to 100 scale that every country sets together. Confidence measures the evidence behind the score and sits beside it as a second number.
The Agency score tracks GDP per capita at r = 0.45 across 123 countries.
Observed indicators
- Position on the scale19.6Peer median26.610 peers with a value
New business density
3.5 per 1,000 aged 15-64
World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS), 2023
- Position on the scale88.6Peer median90.210 peers with a value
Time to start a business
8 days
World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY), 2019
- Position on the scale89.5Peer median78.910 peers with a value
Procedures to start a business
3 count
World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO), 2019
- Position on the scale47.8Peer median65.27 peers with a value
Perceived control over life
7 mean 1-10
Joint EVS/WVS (A173), 2022
No comparable source yet, so lowering confidence: adults doing digital tasks.
What South Korea has to work with
Beside each condition, two r values read every country at once, one against income and one against the capability score. Where the r with income is much higher than the r with the score, having the condition goes with being rich more than with the capability measured.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
97.9 % of population, rank 5 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
- r with income: 0.89 (123 countries)
- r with the Agency score: 0.37 (124 countries)
- Peer median: 93.6 % of population (10 peers with a value)
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
96.9 % aged 15+, rank 24 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
- r with income: 0.78 (121 countries)
- r with the Agency score: 0.36 (122 countries)
- Peer median: 98.3 % aged 15+ (10 peers with a value)
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2024
160 % of GDP, rank 5 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
- r with income: 0.59 (123 countries)
- r with the Agency score: 0.39 (124 countries)
- Peer median: 84.6 % of GDP (10 peers with a value)
Where does South Korea sit among its peers?
The peers are the 10 countries at the nearest income. Income is GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, in constant international dollars, for the latest year the World Bank publishes, and distance is measured on a log scale, where half and double are equally far. No country is picked by hand, and the set changes when the data does.
In this release peer income runs from US$ 49,292 to US$ 62,824, and South Korea has US$ 55,697 (2025).
- Solid ring: usable or good evidence
- Broken ring: thin evidence, opening further as confidence falls
- The shaded band is the middle half of the set and the line inside it is the median.
- United Kingdom: 92.7
- Australia: 89.2
- Canada: 71.9
- Finland: 71.7
- France: 65.0
- South Korea: 61.4
- Spain: 59.0
- Italy: 55.5
- Cyprus: 55.3
- Germany: 51.5
- Czechia: 48.5
What separates South Korea from its peers?
South Korea scores 61.4 on Agency, below the median of the 10 scored peers, which is 62.
Indicators placed above the peer median on the scale: procedures to start a business.
Indicators placed below the peer median on the scale: new business density, time to start a business, and perceived control over life.
South Korea has more than the peer median of individuals using the internet and credit to the private sector.
South Korea has less than the peer median of financial account ownership.
Each sentence compares one position with one median. Why a difference exists, and what to do about it, lie outside this data.
What this reading does not show
- A national score is a coarse proxy. A capability forms in firms, cities, networks and groups below the level of the country, and a national average only describes the conditions they work in.
- Peers share income and nothing else. Size, production structure, region and political regime are outside the rule, and a set of 10 countries can change with any revision to GDP.
- An r reads the whole set at once and says nothing about one country alone. A correlation does not show a cause either.
- The known artefacts that bear on Agency, described on the limits page: artefact A6, artefact A14, artefact A15.
- And the ones every score in the benchmark carries: artefact A8, artefact A10.