Country comparison: Japan / South Korea

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for Japan and South Korea. For further information and explanations, we provide many details per country that go far beyond this comparison. For example, there are separate sub-pages for both countries on economy, climate, energy, refugees, inflation, population and much more.
In addition, we offer several international comparisons on individual topics, which are also linked on this page.

General information

	Japan	South Korea
Region:	East Asia	East Asia
Area:	377,970 km²	100,339 km²
Official language:	Japanese	Korean
Government form:	Parliamentary constitutional monarchy	Presidential republic
Independent since:	660 BC	1948 AD
Capital:	Tokyo	Seoul

Population

Details for Japan and South Korea

	Japan	South Korea
Population:	125,682,000	51,745,000
Inhabitants/km²:	332.5	515.7
Life expectancy males:	Ø 82 years	Ø 81 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 88 years	Ø 87 years
Average age:	Ø 48.6 years	Ø 43.2 years
Birthrate:	6.80 ‰	5.30 ‰
Deathrate:	11.10 ‰	5.90 ‰
Migrationrate:	0.74 ‰	2.63 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	Japan	South Korea
Political stability:	87	81
Civil rights:	86	75
Health:	92	92
Climate:	54	56
Cost of Living:	27	42
Popularity:	41	41

Economy

Details for Japan and South Korea

	Japan	South Korea
Currency:	Japanese Yen (1 JPY = 100 Sen)	Won (1 KRW =100 Chon)
Unemployment rate:	2.8 %	3.5 %
Inflation rate:	-0.23 %	2.50 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	101.95 %	86.98 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	46.70 %	33.20 %
Average income:	42,620 US$	34,980 US$
Corruption index:	27 (good)	38 (moderate)

	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.	KOR: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	4,937,422 M US$	39.29 M US$	1,798,534 M US$	34.76 M US$
Gross national product:	5,356,987 M US$	42.62 M US$	1,809,840 M US$	34.98 M US$
Exported goods:	919,158 M US$	7.31 M US$	771,202 M US$	14.90 M US$
Imported goods:	941,671 M US$	7.49 M US$	698,103 M US$	13.49 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for Japan and South Korea

	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.	KOR: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	1,218,772 km	9.70 km	100,428 km	1.94 km
Railways:	27,311 km	0.22 km	4,111 km	0.08 km
Waterways:	1,770 km	0.01 km	1,600 km	0.03 km
Harbours:	5,201	0.0414	1,904	0.0368
Passenger airports:	80	0.0006	15	0.0003

Energy balance

Details for Japan and South Korea

	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.	KOR: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	943.70 bn kWh	7.51 m kWh	507.60 bn kWh	9.81 m kWh
Energy production:	989.30 bn kWh	7.87 m kWh	526.00 bn kWh	10.17 m kWh
CO2 emissions:	1.08 bn t	8,605.64 t	610.79 m t	11,803.87 t

Telecommunication

Details for Japan and South Korea

	Japan	South Korea
International dialing:	+81	+82
Internet domain:	.jp	.kr

	JPN total	JPN per 1000 inh.	KOR total	KOR per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	61,978,594	493	23,858,239	461
Mobile cellulars:	195,054,893	1552	70,513,676	1363
Internet server:	64,453,000	513	315,697	6
Internet users:	113,389,252	902	49,936,423	965
Broadband Internet:	44,000,791	350	22,327,182	431

Healthcare system

Details for Japan and South Korea

	Japan	South Korea
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	12.98	12.43
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	2.41	2.37
Diabetes:	5.6 %	6.9 %
Tuberculosis:	0.12 ‰	0.49 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	66.0 %	82.0 %
Smokers:	20.1 %	20.8 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: Japan and South Korea

	Japan	South Korea
Daytime temperatures:	19.1 °C	18.1 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	11.3 °C	9.8 °C
Water temperature:	18.0 °C	12.8 °C
Rel. humidity:	69 %	69 %
Rain days:	10.0	6.8
Sunshine hours per day:	5.3	6.1

Native languages

	Japan	South Korea
Korean:	0.5 %	99.9 %
Japanese:	99.1 %	n/a
Chinese:	0.2 %	0.1 %
English:	0.1 %	n/a
Filipino:	0.1 %	n/a
other:	0.0 %	0.0 %

Religions

	Japan	South Korea
Shinto:	79.2 %	n/a
Buddhism:	66.8 %	24.2 %
Nondenominational:	n/a	43.3 %
Christianity:	1.5 %	31.6 %
other:	-47.5 %	0.9 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

Japan	South Korea
All information: Japan	All information: South Korea
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