Dong-A has been reigning as the highest revenue producer in Korea’s pharmaceutical market during the last 40 years or so.

However, the company’s market leadership is evidently challenged by Daewoong (in terms of EDI claim prescription drug revenue) and Green Cross, whose net profit jumped 267 percent in the first half of 2010 from the same period last year.

Green Cross, which ranked second in terms of overall revenue (i.e. Rx, OTC, vaccines, etc, all inclusive) last year, announced last month that its first-half all-inclusive revenue jumped 72.9 percent to 447.5 billion won, while it earned an operating profit of 109.9 billion won ― 231.8 percent up from a year earlier. The net profit for this year’s first half was a company record of 81.4 billion won.

Compared to Green Cross’s highly positive earnings, Dong-A generated revenue of 422 billion won during the same period, just an 8.1 percent increase from last year’s figures. Its operating profit was 51.9 billion won ― a good 31.7 percent increase but less than a half as compared to Green Cross.

Yuhan, the largest pharmaceutical firm in terms of market cap, chalked up 331.5 billion won of [all-inclusive] revenue in the first half of 2010. It reported an operating profit of 49 billion won ― a 22.2 percent increase from a year earlier.

Hanmi, whose annual revenue was the fourth highest in 2009, earned 300 billion won in revenue ― an 2 percent decline from the previous year. Its operating profit also dropped by 80.6 percent to 4.9 billion won.

The surge in Green Cross’ income was largely attributed to sales of swine flu (H1N1) vaccines. “We have had a stable double-digit growth in exports, blood-related products and flu vaccines,” said the company spokesperson in a written statement.