This file photo shows the buildings of South Korea’s major companies in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 29 (Korea Bizwire) — At South Korea’s biggest enterprises, the highest-paid executives made 16 times more than the median worker last year, a corporate tracker said Tuesday.
Leaders Index analyzed data from 282 Korean companies that disclosed information on their highest-paid earners for last year.
The annual wage of these companies’ highest-paid executives averaged 1.4 billion won (US$1.08 million) last year, down 26.7 percent from a year before.
The average wage of the employees of the analyzed companies stood at 90.9 million won, up 4.9 percent year on year.
The wage gap between the highest-paid executives and the median worker stood at 15.5 times, lower than 22.2 times a year ago.
Online gaming giant NCSOFT Corp. had the biggest wage gap between highest-paid executives and median worker.
Kim Taek-jin, CEO and founder of NCSOFT, received an annual wage of 12.4 billion won last year, 108.6 times higher than the average wage of the company’s workers.
The industry with the highest average wage for employees was holding companies. The wage of employees for the nine surveyed companies averaged 184 million won.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
