South Korea placed fifth among countries with the most companies ranked as one of the world's top two-thousand firms, up two spots from nearly a decade ago.

According to the Korea Economic Research Institute(KERI) on Monday, 62 of the country's public companies were included on the Forbes Global 2000 list in 2019, compared to 61 in 2011.

That helped South Korea jump from seventh to fifth, in terms of the number of businesses that made the cut by country.

Comparing the lists from 2011 and 2019, the United States maintained the top spot with 575 companies, while China outpaced Japan to rank second by nearly doubling its total from 167 to 309 firms.

Although South Korea has more companies on the list, their profitability fell short of the average of other foreign businesses.

With the exception of the pharmaceutical, financial services, cosmetics and mining industries, the average operating profit to sales ratio of companies in the other 19 areas, such as semiconductors and manufacturing, was five-point-four percent, compared to the global average of nine-point-four percent.