This is GDP viewed from the income side: it adds what workers receive in compensation, what producers retain as operating surplus and taxes on production after subsidies. It is also nominal, meaning price changes have not been stripped out.
The Bank of Korea’s briefing says operating surplus in manufacturing and finance increased 17%, mainly as higher semiconductor export prices improved corporate profits. Employee compensation rose 4%. That makes the headline an income and price story, not a 10.5% jump in real production.
A 4.75% increase in the OECD’s quarterly fixed-investment measure came alongside the GDP gain. Gross fixed capital formation covers spending on long-lived assets such as machinery and buildings, but this measure is also reported in current won, so it does not reveal how much investment volume grew after price changes.
The record label covers data back to Q1 1960, although new highs are less remarkable for nominal GDP than for inflation-adjusted output: economic growth and rising prices push the money value upward over time. For households, the key question is whether the profit-led increase turns into stronger wages, investment and real output.
The apparent first-place ranking among 36 countries should be ignored. The table reports each economy in its own national currency, so raw won totals cannot be meaningfully ranked against amounts in euros, dollars or other currencies.