South Korea’s game industry maintained fourth global rank, with sales at 14.29 trillion won ($12.14 billion) in 2018.

Game revenue rose 8.7 percent from 2017, exceeding the global average gain of 7.1 percent in the year, according to the 2019 White Paper on Korean Games published by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency on Tuesday.

The value of the global game market came to $178.36 billion in 2018, up 7.1 percent from a year ago. Korea accounted for 6.3 percent of the worldwide game market, maintaining its fourth-place ranking following the United States, China and Japan. Sales grew in all game platforms, contributing to growth in the Korean game industry, the white paper said.

Korea’s game exports in 2018 increased 8.2 percent on year to $6.41 billion, representing 67.1 percent of the country’s all content exports ($9.55 billion). Game imports also grew 16.3 percent to $305.78 million, the white paper said.

By Lee Yong-ik and Minu Kim

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