SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's new business creations fell for a fifth consecutive year, dragging down the country's business birth rate to an all-time low, statistical ministry data showed Thursday.
The number of newly established businesses declined 1.5 percent from a year earlier to 908,000 in 2025, extending its losing streak to five years, according to the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
Despite the persistent slump in startups, the number of active businesses with sales or regular employees grew 1.4 percent to 7,748,000 last year.
The business birth rate, or the proportion of newly created enterprises to active businesses, dipped 0.3 percentage points to 11.7 percent in 2025, marking the lowest since data tracking began in 2011.
On the other side of the ledger, the number of business closures decreased 2.7 percent year-on-year to 769,000 in 2024.
It brought down the business death rate by 0.4 percentage points to a record low of 10.1 percent in the cited year.
The one-year survival rate for new businesses, launched in 2023, retreated 0.5 percentage points to 63.9 percent in 2024, hitting the lowest in six years since 2018.
The five-year survival rate, however, inched up 0.1 percentage points to a record high of 36.5 percent, extending its gaining streak to eight straight years since 2016. ■
