The growth of Korea’s bio industry reflects decades of accumulated progress. Since establishing early legal and research foundations in the 1980s and introducing the technology special listing system in 2005, Korea has built a robust ecosystem now supported by over 3,600 bio-ventures.

This foundation is yielding significant results. In 2024, industry revenue reached KRW 22.9 trillion, driven by KRW 13.7 trillion in exports. By 2025, technology exports hit a record USD 14.5 billion across 17 deals, driven by higher contract value per deal rather than volume. Notably, Korean companies secured 5 of the 18 U.S. FDA biosimilar approvals in 2025—positioning Korea alongside established pharmaceutical powerhouses. Korea is steadily expanding its role from a traditional manufacturing hub into an active contributor to global market standards.

Because securing a platform—a foundational technological framework—allows for the continuous development of multiple new drugs, the technology to build such platforms has become a core competitive asset of K-bio. ABL Bio signed a deal worth up to USD 2.5 billion with GSK for its Grabody-B shuttle platform, which delivers drugs across the blood-brain barrier to the brain. LigaChem Biosciences also signed a USD 1.7 billion deal with Johnson & Johnson for its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) platform. Alteogen collaborates with global pharmaceutical companies through its ALT-B4 platform, which converts intravenous injections into subcutaneous injections. Cases of leading new drug development all the way to global commercialization are also increasing. Yuhan Corporation’s lung cancer drug Leclaza (Lazcluze in the U.S.) is the product of open innovation—discovered by a domestic venture company, further developed by Yuhan, and licensed to Janssen—and became the first Korean-developed anticancer drug to receive U.S. FDA approval in 2024. SK Biopharmaceuticals’ epilepsy drug Cenobamate is a Direct-to-Global case, in which the company carried out everything from development to U.S. FDA approval and local sales itself.

AI is expanding its scope of application beyond predicting the structure of proteins—the three-dimensional structures that cause disease and are targeted by drugs—and discovering disease targets, into clinical trial design and manufacturing process optimization. In Korea as well, cases are emerging of companies using proprietary AI platforms to shorten the time needed to discover candidate substances. Galux, a company founded by Seoul National University researchers, has entered into joint research with Boehringer Ingelheim using its AI antibody design technology. Ultimately, AI performance comes down to data. Over 2.3 million cases of genomic and proteomic data generated through national R&D have been consolidated in the Korea BioData Station (K-BDS), and the National Integrated Bio Big Data Project—which aims to build clinical and genomic data on 1 million Koreans by 2032—is expanding the foundation for precision medicine.

Backed by large hospitals and skilled medical staff, Korea maintains a position among the world’s top countries in company-led clinical trials. Its bio-manufacturing capacity is even more pronounced. Incheon’s Songdo International City, home to some 60 companies including Samsung Biologics, Celltrion and Lotte Biologics, is one of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical production clusters, with a production capacity of 1.04 million liters as of 2025. That capacity is projected to more than double to 2.14 million liters by 2030. The K-NIBRT Bioprocessing Workforce Training Center aims to train 2,000 specialized personnel annually. As pharmaceutical companies diversify their production bases amid the restructuring of global supply chains, Korea is drawing attention as a reliable production partner.

The government is cultivating strategic technologies as a national policy priority, designating advanced biotechnology as one such area to foster synthetic biology, bio-manufacturing and gene and cell therapy, while establishing the National Bio Innovation Committee as a control tower to coordinate policy across ministries. The government has set a goal of shortening the new drug approval and review period from 420 to 240 days. In April 2025, Korea enacted the world’s first Synthetic Biology Promotion Act, supporting synthetic biology research and industrialization and laying the institutional groundwork for building a national bio-foundry that automates the design-build-test-learn cycle. The government is also pursuing a “Korean-style Bio Cluster” initiative, developing individual bio clusters into regional hubs and connecting them into a global network.

The challenges ahead are clear. The next task is to complete the value chain beyond technology exports and expanded production capacity—extending it through late-stage clinical trials to global approval and sales. Capabilities accumulated in biosimilars and CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) work need to be expanded into first-in-class new drugs and original platform technologies, and basic and original research from universities and government-funded research institutes must be translated into startups and industry.

The key to this lies in AI and synthetic biology. The government’s “K-moonshot” project, a national mission in advanced biotechnology, has proposed a dramatic reduction in AI-based drug development timelines and the commercialization of brain-computer interfaces. Though uncertain, moonshot-style R&D with high potential impact could be the catalyst that allows Korea to move beyond catch-up research and create world-first technologies. Synthetic biology and biofoundries will accelerate the development and commercialization of next-generation therapeutics by automating the design-build-test-learn cycle.

In the end, bioscience is a science for people, and made by people. Building an ecosystem where original technology, sprouted from basic research, flows seamlessly through clinical trials and manufacturing to the global market—that is a task for the next generation of scientists and specialists to complete. When that ecosystem is complete, Korea will leap forward from being a production partner in the global bio industry to becoming an innovation nation that helps design the future of both technology and markets.