South Korea’s media content production grew at a pace faster than the growth rate recorded in the global market in 2015, securing the country a status as the world‘s seventh largest content creator, a state agency said Sunday.

South Korea’s media content market stood at $52 billion as of 2015, up 6.1 percent from the previous year, according to a recent report by the Korea Creative Content Agency.

During the same period, the global content market expanded 5.5 percent to a total of $1.89 trillion, according to the report.   

China posted growth of 11.4 percent for the year, far exceeding the global average. But other key national players, except South Korea, all underperformed the global average.

As of 2015, the US was the biggest media content provider with $701 billion worth of output, followed by China with $176 billion and Japan with $160 billion, according to the report.

South Korea stood in seventh place after edging out Canada, which shared the seventh spot with South Korea a year earlier. In 2013, South Korea was the eighth biggest player.

The report attributed the result to South Korea‘s sound information technology infrastructure which had become a boon for the growth of online information and entertainment content. 

South Korea’s rate of smartphone penetration, which measures the rate of smartphone holders out of all mobile phone users, stood at over 90 percent recently, the highest reading in the world, and the country‘s internet speed is widely hailed as the fastest on the globe. 

The content agency predicted the growth of the local content market is likely to reach an average 4.4 percent over the next five years to amount to $64 billion by 2020.

In the meantime, the global market for content will also post the same 4.4 percent growth rate to reach $2.35 trillion by 2020, the agency said. (Yonhap)