Rice-growing and fisheries dominate the agricultural sector that is an important export earner as well as meeting domestic demand.
Tourism dominates the service sector, which is still relatively small but growing.
Compared with the North, which has extensive coal and mineral deposits, the South is relatively poor in natural resources, although there have been recent offshore discoveries of natural gas which should help to reduce South Korea's dependence on imported energy. This kick-started a strong recovery by the South Korean economy which has now settled at an average annual growth of about 4 per cent. The structural problems of the South Korean economy have yet to be fully addressed but the government has begun to tackle some of the most important weaknesses in the financial sector. The USA and Japan are South Korea's main trading partners, followed by China, Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore. Korean companies have been making inroads into new and emerging markets such as China and Russia.