South Korea's economic growth rate for last year was found to have lagged behind Japan's for the first time in 25 years.

However, due to long-term low growth and the weakening yen, the Japanese economy fell behind Germany's and dropped to fourth in the world for the first time in 55 years.

The Japanese Cabinet Office announced Thursday that its real gross domestic product(GDP) growth rate last year stood at one-point-nine percent.

South Korea's GDP growth rate for 2023, announced by the Bank of Korea last month, was one-point-four percent, zero-point-five percentage points lower than that of Japan.

However, it's expected that South Korea will pass Japan this year, as the World Economic Outlook released last month showed that the International Monetary Fund(IMF) expects South Korea's real GDP growth to be at two-point-three percent, while Japan’s was set at zero-point-nine percent.