Korea Tumbles to 24th in Int’l Competitiveness It's Official: the Government's Reforms Have Failed Korea's Total Area Would Buy Two Canadas Price of Land on Dokdo Rises Again Seoul Ranked 12th in Global Competitiveness Law-and-Order Task Force 'to Boost Competitiveness' WEF Lists Five Major Drags on the Global Economy Korea Leaps to 11th Place in Competitiveness Index

The Geneva-based WEF evaluates some 130 countries in global competitiveness between January and May every year through statistics and surveys on 110 items in 12 categories, including macroeconomics and finance.

The U.S. ranked first for the second consecutive year, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Singapore. Korea's ranking has been yo-yoing wildly, from 29th in 2004 to 19th in 2005, to 23rd in 2006 and 11th in 2007. This year, it was outperformed by Hong Kong and Canada.

In a rival world competitiveness report released by the International Institute for Management Development, also of Switzerland, in May, Korea ranked 31st among 55 countries, also down two notches from last year. The drop was due in large part to its drop in labor market efficiency from 24th in 2007 to 41st, and in financial market sophistication from 27th in 2007 to 37th.

But Korea rose from eighth in 2007 to fourth this year in macroeconomic stability, and ranked ninth in business sophistication and innovation, including corporate research and development.

An official with the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said, "It seems Korea's world competitiveness ranking dropped because the statistics used for the survey were a compilation of last year’s and because the anti-U.S. beef protests were staged during the survey.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )