FOREWORD

 The Bank of Korea is pleased to release the 2024 edition of its Financial Statement Analysis (FSA), published annually since 1960 to provide research on and analysis of the business performance and financial conditions of Korean corporations.

 This edition contains the financial statement analysis report for Korean corporations during 2024, the underlying concepts and methods for calculating their major financial ratios, and their financial statements and major indicators, all classified by industry and by company size. To facilitate cross-country comparisons, the major financial ratios of advanced countries such as the U.S., Japan and Germany are also included.

 Starting with the 2024 survey, the revised 11th edition of the 「Korean Standard Industrial Classification」 has been applied to industry classification. In addition, the company size classification has been refined by subdividing SMEs into mediumsized and small enterprises, with the introduction of a new category for small enterprises to meet the growing demand for more detailed statistics on SMEs.

 For a more in-depth analysis, the full text of this book is available at the Bank of Korea’s website (www.bok.or.kr) and at the website for its Economic Statistics System (ECOS) (http://ecos.bok.or.kr). Furthermore, the related data files can be found at the ECOS website, and major indicators are also available at the ECOS mobile website (http://ecos.bok.or.kr/mobile).

 We hope that this book will be helpful to the government sector in drawing up its economic policies, to companies in framing their business strategies, to financial institutions in assessing their credit risks, and to members of academia in conducting their research. Finally, we express our sincere appreciation to all cooperating institutions whose efforts have made this work possible.