South Korean women earn only 60% of what men earn, on average, 20 million won less annually

The annual salary earned by men and women showed a difference of 20 million won on average. The salary earned by women only amounted to 60% of what men earned.

According to the earned income percentile (thousandth percentile) based on gender, which Democratic Party of Korea legislator Jin Sun-mee of the parliamentary Strategy and Finance Committee received from the National Tax Service on August 8, 19,959,000 wage workers reported wages that slightly exceeded 803.2 trillion won in 2021.

Men (11.12 million) reported nearly 543.2 trillion won of wages, accounting for 67.6% of the total. Women (8,834,000) earned slightly over 259.97 trillion won, 32.4% of the total.

Individually, men earned on average 48,849,000 won, while women earned 29,427,000 won. The difference was 19,422,000 won. On average women earned wages that amounted to 60.2% of the wages earned by men, meaning that when a man received a million won in wages, women only received 602,000 won.

This was more than 4% lower than the 64.6% recorded in a survey based on employment type conducted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor in 2021. The difference seems to have been caused by a difference in survey samples. The survey by the employment ministry collected data on regular full-time employees with a standard labor contract for a year or longer, but the data from the National Tax Service was of the earned income of workers who had worked for three months or longer.

Compared with figures from 2017, the earned income of a male worker increased 14.43% or 6,161,175 won in the past five years from 42,667,893 won. The earned income of a female worker increased 4,584,507 won or 18.45% from 24,842,815 won in the last five years. In 2017, women earned an average income that amounted to 58.2% of the wages earned by men, so the gender gap in earned income narrowed by 2%.

South Korea has had the biggest gender pay gap among member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 27 consecutive years since it first joined the OECD in 1996. According to the gender wage gap (2021) in member countries released by the OECD last December, the gender wage gap was 31.1% in South Korea, the highest among OECD members. The OECD average was 12.0%.

Legislator Jin Sun-mee said, “Limited opportunities for women and the gender wage gap are likely to hinder equivalence in our society and obstruct economic growth,” and stressed, “We need to sufficiently take into consideration the glass ceiling and strengthen the responsibility of our government to ease the gender wage gap.”