South Korea’s research and development spending was the sixth-highest worldwide last year, rising 11.1 percent from a year earlier, a report showed on Tuesday.

The government, research institutes, universities and corporations spent a combined 55.45 trillion won ($52.7 billion) on R&D activity in 2012, up 5.56 trillion won from the previous year, according to the report compiled by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

The R&D spending, worth $49.23 billion, was the sixth-largest in the world, when it was converted by the currency rate of 1,126.47 won adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for the comparison of R&D spending among its member countries.

The country’s ratio of R&D spending to gross domestic product ranked the second-highest in the world last year with a 4.36 percent, trailing Israel, the report showed.

The rankings were based on data tallied in June by the OECD.

The country’s private sector spent a combined 41.44 trillion won on R&D activities last year, accounting for 74.7 percent of the total, while the comparable figure for the public segment was 13.82 trillion won, or 24.9 percent, according to the report. The remainder came from foreign countries.

The report also said the country had a total of 401,724 researchers last year, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier. (Yonhap News)