South Korea

The South Korean drug manufacturing market is benefiting from the volume of patent expiries coming into effect over the next few years (Marketletters passim), which local generic firms hope will provide the means to challenge the domestic branded sector, which is dominated by foreign drug majors. A recent report by management consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers notes that, in the future, the balance of the pharmaceutical industry is shifting away from the USA and Europe towards Asia.

Already, data from the Health Insurance Review Agency suggests that the trend for ever-greater foreign penetration of South Korea's prescription drug market has been reversed since about 2003. In the previous three years, the share of domestic sales by multinationals climbed from 22.2% in 2000 to 27.2%. Last year, it dropped to 26.8%, having been relatively steady for a few years, varying between 27.2% and 27.9%. With major brands coming off-patent, local firms are rushing to produce copy versions of such blockbusters such as Lipitor (atorvastatin), which is the world's leading prescribed drug. The Korea Times reports that generic versions of the cholesterol-lowering agent have been on sale locally since June and have already captured 40% of the market.