Digital Industry Emerges as New Growth Engine
Sales Account for Over Half of Manufacturing
Digital Orders Surpass Traditional Transactions at 61.5%
Cloud, Big Data, and AI Adoption Accelerating
The domestic digital industry grew to a scale of 1,261 trillion won in 2023, accounting for 14.5% of total industry sales. This indicates that the sector is moving away from its traditional dependence on manufacturing and is being recognized as a new growth engine for the national economy.
According to the "Digital Industry Survey" released on August 28 by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Information Society Development Institute, digital industry sales in 2023 reached 1,261 trillion won, a 10.5% increase from 1,141 trillion won in 2022.
In particular, the size of digital industry sales reached 52.1% of manufacturing sales (2,422 trillion won), surpassing the halfway mark. The Ministry of Science and ICT analyzed this as evidence that the digital industry is establishing itself as a new growth driver, moving away from the traditional reliance on manufacturing.
Breaking down the figures, digital-based industries recorded 532.8 trillion won, related industries such as digital wholesale, retail, and finance reached 408.8 trillion won, platform-utilizing industries accounted for 187.4 trillion won, and platform-providing industries followed with 132.3 trillion won in sales. The total number of employees in the digital industry was 2.02 million, representing 7.9% of the total industrial workforce of 25.45 million.
In terms of digital adoption by companies, 35.5% were at the "basic computer introduction" stage, 61.4% were at the "application to work such as electronic documents and online transactions" stage, and only 3.1% had advanced to the "innovation across management and production" level.
The government commented, "While basic digital utilization has become widespread, companies that have achieved enterprise-wide digital transformation are still rare." However, the survey found that companies are investing in infrastructure, app/web/electronic data interchange (EDI) procurement systems, and that decision-making systems utilizing AI and big data analytics are rapidly spreading.
Transaction patterns are also changing rapidly. The proportion of digital order sales stood at 61.5%, 1.6 times higher than non-digital orders (38.5%). In particular, platform-utilizing industries-including wholesale, retail, accommodation, and food services-had a digital order ratio as high as 85.1%.
Looking at the adoption of digital technologies from 2021 to 2023, cloud computing was the most widely adopted at 35.4%, followed by big data at 24.3%, artificial intelligence at 22.4%, and AI semiconductors at 19.4%.
Song Sanghun, Director General of ICT Policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, stated, "As digital industry sales continue to expand, it is important to create a virtuous cycle that drives industrial innovation and productivity improvement through artificial intelligence transformation (AX) and digital transformation (DX). The government will actively support this, based on the high demand for AI technology among domestic companies."
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