More recently it has gained a competitive edge in the automobile industry, and in a range of fields in the information technology industry including semiconductors and mobile phones. Korea's per capita GDP stood at merely $ in 1960.
However, it has grown by an average of over 7% a year for a period of some 40 years, to rank 11th in terms of economic scale worldwide, and its per capita GDP is running at the $ level in 2005.