South Korea · Human Development Index · UNDP

## What this measures

The UN's composite of how long people in South Korea live, how much schooling they get, and their income — geometric mean of the three, scaled 0 to 1.

## Why it matters

The quality-of-life read in the lattice. It moves slowly and reflects decades of investment — the ground a government's promises stand on.

## How to read it

Above 0.8 is 'very high' development in UNDP's bands; the trend matters more than the level.

## What it does not say

Published with a two-year lag. Income is only a third of it, and it says nothing about inequality (UNDP's IHDI adjusts for that).

## Source

Source: UNDP Human Development Report Office, composite indices time series (CC BY 3.0 IGO). UNDP recalculates the full series with each report; Palanor rewrites the whole history on every sync so the stored series always matches the current release.