South Korea in the Rankings
Four of RList’s rankings are about South Korea itself: its highest-rated TV dramas, its most-watched films, its reality shows in Netflix’s Global Top 10 and the countries that buy the most Korean beauty products.
Elsewhere, as of October 2026, its National Pension Service is the world’s fourth-largest pension fund, Seoul’s Lotte World Tower is the sixth-tallest skyscraper and South Koreans have the fourth-highest life expectancy. K-pop has a spotlight of its own.
Where South Korea ranks
South Korea’s best placing in each ranking where it makes the top 10. Unranked lists show “Pick”.
| Rank | Ranking | Entry | Figure | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | The Tallest Male K-pop Idols | Junghyun +10 more in the top 10 | 195 cmHeight | Pop Culture & Entertainment |
| #1 | The Tallest Female K-pop Idols | Hanyoung +10 more in the top 10 | 178 cmHeight | Pop Culture & Entertainment |
| #4 | The Largest Pension Funds in the World | National Pension Service (NPS) | 1,005.5Assets (US$ billion) | Money & Business |
| #4 | The Countries with the Highest Life Expectancy | South Korea | 84.3Life expectancy (years) | Health & Medicine |
| #5 | Countries with the Largest National Open Data Portals in 2026 | South Korea | 107,901Datasets | Tech & AI |
| #6 | The Tallest Skyscrapers in the World | Lotte World Tower — Seoul, South Korea (2017) | 555 mHeight | Buildings & Structures |
| #7 | The Fastest Trains in the World | KTX-Sancheon (Gyeongbu line) | 305Max operating speed (km/h) | Vehicles & Machines |
| #8 | The Asian Countries with the Highest Prostate Cancer Rates | South Korea | 29.3Incidence, age-standardised (per 100,000 men) | Health & Medicine |
| #10 | The Largest Open-Weight AI Language Models | K-EXAONE 2.0 | 750BTotal parameters | Tech & AI |
| Pick | Robots of CES 2026: The Ones to Watch | ALLEX +4 more on the list | Tech & AI |
No matching rows.
Rankings about South Korea
Each ranking and who leads it.
| Ranking | Leader | Figure | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Highest-Rated K-Dramas in Korean TV History | #1 You and I 그대 그리고 나 | 1997–98Aired | Pop Culture & Entertainment |
| The Most-Watched Korean Films of All Time | #1 The Admiral: Roaring Currents 명량 | 2014Year | Pop Culture & Entertainment |
| Korean Reality Shows With the Most Weeks in Netflix's Global Top 10 | #1 Culinary Class Wars, Season 1 | 6Weeks in Top 10 | Pop Culture & Entertainment |
| The Biggest Buyers of Korean Beauty Products | #1 United States | $1.75B2025 exports (US$) | Money & Business |
No matching rows.
More in the spotlight
All 14 rankings
The Largest Open-Weight AI Language Models
The 21 biggest AI language models you can download, one per lab, ranked by total parameters: Moonshot's Kimi K3 leads at 2.8 trillion, ahead of Qwen3.8 at 2.4 trillion.
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The Tallest Male K-pop Idols
The tallest male K-pop idols, ranked by height and refreshed monthly. Junghyun leads at 195 cm; the tallest from outside South Korea is James Lee (United States) at 193 cm.
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The Tallest Female K-pop Idols
The tallest female K-pop idols, ranked by height and refreshed monthly. Four idols share first place at 178 cm, including Hanyoung; the tallest from outside South Korea is K (China) at 176 cm.
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The Largest Pension Funds in the World
Norway, Japan, the US federal Thrift Savings Plan and Korea each hold more than $1 trillion: a ranking of the 20 largest pension funds by assets, from the Thinking Ahead Institute and Pensions & Investments Global Top 300 study.
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The Highest-Rated K-Dramas in Korean TV History
Korean TV dramas ranked by their most-watched episode. MBC's You and I leads with a 66.9% household rating for its April 1998 finale, and every drama in the top 16 aired on KBS, MBC or SBS between 1991 and 2004.
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Korean Reality Shows With the Most Weeks in Netflix's Global Top 10
Korean reality seasons ranked by how many weeks they spent in Netflix's weekly global Top 10 for non-English TV. The first seasons of Culinary Class Wars and Physical: 100 share the record at six weeks, and the dating show Single's Inferno has all five of its seasons in the top 10.
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The Most-Watched Korean Films of All Time
The Korean films that sold the most cinema tickets in South Korea. The Admiral: Roaring Currents leads with 17.6 million admissions, about one for every three people in the country, and all 25 films here passed 10 million.
View ranking →The Biggest Buyers of Korean Beauty Products
The US bought $1.75 billion of Korean skincare and make-up in 2025, passing China as the biggest market. Japan, Hong Kong and Vietnam complete the top five, and Poland more than doubled its purchases to reach #9.
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The Fastest Trains in the World
Passenger trains ranked by the top speed they actually run in regular service — China's Fuxing and Indonesia's Whoosh lead at 350 km/h, and the Shanghai Maglev now runs at 300.
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The Asian Countries with the Highest Prostate Cancer Rates
New prostate cancer cases per 100,000 men, age-standardised, from IARC's GLOBOCAN 2022 estimates. Cyprus, Japan and Israel lead the 12 highest-rate countries in Asia, using the UN and IARC definition of the region.
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The Countries with the Highest Life Expectancy
Life expectancy at birth, both sexes, from the UN World Population Prospects 2024 (2023 estimates). Monaco and San Marino lead the sovereign states, with Japan the highest large country; non-sovereign territories such as Hong Kong are excluded.
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Robots of CES 2026: The Ones to Watch
From Boston Dynamics' production-ready Atlas to LG's laundry-folding CLOiD and a stair-climbing Roborock vacuum, the humanoids, home helpers, mowers and companion bots that stole the show at CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
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Countries with the Largest National Open Data Portals in 2026
The U.S., India and Germany run the world's biggest government open data portals — 15 countries ranked by how many datasets their national portal lists in 2026.
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The Tallest Skyscrapers in the World
From the Burj Khalifa on down, ranked by roof height.
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