Businesses in Jeju Special Self-Governing Province top 120,000, but high-growth firms fall 33% to 34

【Financial News, Jeju = Reporter Jeong Yong-bok】 The number of high-growth firms in Jeju fell by 17 (33.3%) year on year to 34 in 2025. The number of active businesses rose to 120,413 over the same period, but Jeju’s high-growth firm share was 1.2%, the lowest nationwide, tied with Gangwon.
According to the “2025 Business Demography Administrative Statistics (Provisional) Results” released by the National Data Agency on the 22nd, the number of high-growth firms in Jeju fell from 51 in 2024 to 34 last year. The decline was more than twice the national average of 15.9%.
A high-growth firm is one with at least 10 regular employees whose sales and number of regular employees each grew by an annual average of 20% or more over the past three years. Both sales and employment must increase for a firm to be classified as high-growth.
Jeju’s share of high-growth firms fell by 0.5 percentage points, from 1.7% in 2024 to 1.2% last year. The national average also declined, from 2.1% to 1.8%, but Jeju tied with Gangwon for the lowest rate among the 17 cities and provinces.
A similar result emerged even when the growth threshold was lowered to an annual average of 10%. The number of high-growth firms in Jeju fell by 51 (30.2%), from 169 in 2024 to 118 last year. Their share was 4.2%, 1.7 percentage points below the national average of 5.9%, ranking last among the 17 cities and provinces.
By contrast, the total number of businesses in Jeju increased. Active businesses—those with sales last year or regular employees—numbered 120,413, up 2,204 (1.9%) from 118,209 the previous year. The increase was 0.5 percentage points higher than the national rate of 1.4%.
The number of newly established businesses also edged up. Jeju had 14,935 new businesses, up 65 (0.4%) from 14,870 the previous year. This contrasted with the nationwide total, which fell 1.5% year on year to 908,468.
Jeju’s startup rate was 12.4%, 0.7 percentage points above the national average of 11.7%. It ranked fourth among the 17 cities and provinces, after Sejong, Incheon and Gyeonggi. However, Jeju’s startup rate itself fell by 0.2 percentage points from about 12.6% in 2024. This was because the total number of active businesses grew faster than the number of new businesses.
By organizational type, there were 14,030 sole proprietorships among the new businesses, up 77 from the previous year, while the number of corporations fell by 12 to 905.

Business-death statistics showed that 12,268 businesses in Jeju ceased operations in 2024. That was 791 (6.1%) fewer than the 13,059 in 2023. The business death rate was 10.4%, 0.3 percentage points above the national average of 10.1%.
Business deaths can only be confirmed by checking business activity data for the following year, so this release includes data through 2024. The number of new businesses in 2025 and the number of businesses that ceased operations in 2024 cannot be compared as business openings and closures for the same period.
Businesses’ long-term survival rate also fell short of the national average. Jeju’s five-year survival rate was 35.1%, 1.4 percentage points below the national average of 36.5%. It was the same as Busan and Gwangju, and the second-lowest rate after Ulsan (33.5%).
The five-year survival rate is the share of businesses established in 2019 that remained active through 2024. In Jeju, about 35 of every 100 new businesses established that year were still operating five years later. The one-year survival rate was also below the national average: 63.0% compared with 63.9%.
Nationwide, the decline in new businesses in the accommodation and food service sector was pronounced. The number of new businesses in the sector fell 11.0% year on year to 128,059 last year. Its five-year survival rate was 27.8%, below the 36.5% average across all industries.
The National Data Agency plans to publish detailed data from these provisional statistics on the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS) this coming December. The additional detailed data will make it possible to examine the growth structure of businesses in Jeju more closely by analyzing regional industry composition and business size together.
The statistics showed that while the numbers of active and new businesses in Jeju increased, the number of high-growth firms fell and the five-year survival rate remained below the national average. Alongside the increase in the number of businesses, ensuring the survival of startups and tracking their growth in sales and employment are emerging as challenges for business development policy in Jeju.


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