
The salary gap between executives and rank-and-file employees of top-30 publicly listed companies has widened further.
By individual company, Samsung Electronics had the largest gap while Hyundai Department Store Group took the top spot in term of business group. Of the top-30 conglomerates, the No. 1 business group with the highest average executive salaries was Samsung Group, which was 5.8 times higher than that for Daelim Group at the bottom. The top group with the highest average employee salaries was Hyundai Motor Group, which was 2.5 times higher than that for Lotte Group at the bottom.
According to Chaebol.com, the website tracking corporate performance, on August 9, the average salary of top-30 group executives was 754.88 million won (US$648,100), 10.8 times higher than that for rank-and-file employees (69.99 million won). By business group, Hyundai Department Store Group was ranked highest in terms of executive pay whose average was 115.70 million won. Meanwhile, their employees fell short of earning an average of 44.48 million won. The gap of 26 times was highest among all 30 business groups.
Samsung Group paid their executives an average of 149.79 million won, 17.1 times higher than that of the rank and file. As for Lotte Group, executives (642.36 million won) earned 16.9 times more than their employees (37.90 million won). The salary gap between executives (963.52 million won) and the rank and file (62.16 million won) at LS Group was 15.5 times. Hanwha Group's salary gap was 15.1 times between 1,006.13 million won and 70.03 million won.