South Korea positions itself to be the major emerging nation in Asia for clinical trials. South Korea has precipitously burgeoned with both global and local clinical trials over the past 10 years. South Korea contributes a share of 5% to overall clinical trial registered globally in 2013. Adding further, there are 142 clinical trial sites certified by KFDA (Korean Food and Drug Administration) thus far. This places Korea second in having the highest number of clinical trial sites globally.

Korean government’s unceasing support in developing clinical and healthcare has attracted many Biopharmaceutical companies to invest in the region and the local clinical trials in Korea are surpassing the multi-national clinical trials recently. The reason for this being that the Korean Government along with the pharmaceutical companies had created new strategies to keep the R&D innovation going. Moreover Korean based pharma and biotech companies invest 65% of their total annual profit into developing innovative therapeutics in their pipeline and also the focus on developing biosimilars bolsters the increase in local clinical studies.