Forbes' 2025 Global 2000 List: South Korea - The World’s Largest Companies Ranked

The growth of South Korea's $1.7 trillion GDP has stalled in recent years, forecast by the Bank of Korea to see anemic 0.8% GDP growth this year, following a 0.2% contraction in the first quarter. The KOSPI stock index is up 6% in the past year and merely 34% in 5 years. The nation’s new president, the progressive Lee Jae-Myung, has pledged a $30 billion tech stimulus package.

One catalyst could be its investment in robotics, spurred by ‘chaebols’ Samsung and Hyundai, the two highest-ranked Korean companies on the Global 2000. The list ranks the largest companies in the world using four metrics: sales, profits, asset and market value. As a group, the 63 companies from South Korea account for $1.7 trillion in sales, $103 billion in profits, $5.4 trillion in assets and $850 billion in market value. We used the latest 12 months of financial data available to us as of April 25, 2015 to calculate the factors used in our rankings.