Of the 100 largest conglomerates in South Korea, over half of them paid their employees an average salary of 100 million won ($68,000) or above in 2024, a local media outlet reported Monday.
Yonhap News Agency recently analyzed the largest companies in the country by sales, and found that the average salaries for 55 of them exceeded the 100 million won threshold. That number has increased every year from nine in 2019, and was up five from 48 in 2023.
CJ Corp., the holding company of CJ Group, recorded the highest salaries with 806 million won, followed by the employees of SK Square and DL Holdings, who were paid on average 280 million won and 201 million won, respectively.
The average salaries for holding companies were generally higher than the affiliated companies in the same group, as they have a higher percentage of executives. This was demonstrated by the 187 million won average salary of LG Corp. being substantially larger than the group's largest company LG Electronics at 117 million won.
The five largest companies in Korea all paid more than 100 million won on average to their employees: Samsung Electronics (130 million won), Hyundai Motors (124 million won), SK Inc. (116 million won), Kia (136 million won) and LG Electronics
Recent government data shows that employees of large corporations in South Korea are paid nearly twice as much as those of companies categorized as small and medium-sized enterprises. According to Statistics Korea, the average salary for SMEs in 2024 was 54.7 percent of that for large corporations, which are defined by those that exceed government criteria for SMEs, such as 500 million won in assets.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
