Korea's big five pharma put 12.4% of sales into R&D, and three of them set it by formula

The cleanest figure in these filings is the one none of the five published. Add the disclosures up and first-half R&D across Yuhan, Chong Kun Dang, Hanmi, GC Biopharma and Daewoong comes to 562.8 billion won on 4.55 trillion won of revenue, or 12.4% of sales ^[12][13][14]. Reverse the reported growth rates and the comparable base a year earlier was about 486.1 billion won, so the group added roughly 76.7 billion won of research spending, up 15.8% ^[15]. Chong Kun Dang contributed about 30.4 billion won of that, close to 40% of the entire increment, from a company holding 20.4% of the group's revenue ^[16][17].

That concentration is worth reading carefully, because Chong Kun Dang's own explanation is not a strategy statement. A company official attributed the 36.6% rise to higher contract research and clinical trial costs ^[5][6]. Trial spending arrives with the phase, and it does not compound politely.

The three companies that did make strategy statements described R&D as a fixed claim on the top line rather than a residual. Yuhan said it concentrates roughly 10% of annual revenue on research and reported 10.5% for the half ^[3][4]. Hanmi said it has invested 13% to 15% of annual revenue each year and intends to hold that stance, and came in at 14.6% ^[7][8]. GC Biopharma said annual spending is planned to stay at around 9.5% to 10%, and landed at exactly 10.0% ^[10]. Budgets set that way are decided before the earnings line is known, which is the strongest available evidence that thinner margins here are chosen rather than suffered.

The framing of a tight 10% to 12% band does not survive the arithmetic. The reported ratios run from GC Biopharma's 10.0% to Daewoong's 15.7% ^[10][11], while the won amounts cluster inside a 1.46x range between 85.9 billion and 125.5 billion ^[18]. Spending is close to flat in absolute terms across five companies of different sizes, so the ratio is mostly telling you about the denominator. Daewoong's revenue is 62.9% of Yuhan's, and its research ratio is half again as high ^[20]. The denominators are also not the same animal: Yuhan's revenue is consolidated, Daewoong's is non-consolidated ^[3][11].

GC Biopharma is the useful outlier. Its increase was 3.8%, and its official credited improved Aliglo profitability and the sale of Curevo with securing the liquidity that funded it ^[10]. That is R&D paid for out of what came in, with a stated ceiling, sitting alongside Hanmi's declared floor. Same sector, opposite budgeting logic.

One caution on the margin story: these semiannual disclosures, filed on the 23rd, report revenue and research spending but no profit or margin figures ^[2][19]. The compression is an inference drawn from the spending side. What the documents actually establish is that the spending was set as policy, which makes the ratio, not the won total, the number that will show whether the policy held.