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A stronger won against the U.S. dollar is likely to push the national per capita income to above the US$20,000 level this year, but that won't be enough to rank Korea higher than 40th in the world.
That means the country's per capita income is not on par with its economic size, since Korea is the 13th largest economy in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP).
In a World Bank survey of gross national income (GNI) of 209 nations around the world last year, Greece ranked 40th with per capita income of $21,690. Korea ranked 49th with $17,690.
Korea needs to double its per capita income to have its ranking match that of its economic size. Sweden and the Netherlands, which ranked 12th and 13th in the World Bank survey, posted per capita income of $43,480 and $42,670, respectively.
The reason for the difference in Korea's rankings is that small but strong European nations such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Finland, Austria and Belgium and oil producing countries in the Middle East boast high national per capita income.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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