68 Domestic Companies with Average Employee Annual Salary Over 100 Million KRW Last Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Juhee] Last year, a total of 68 domestic companies had an average annual salary of over 100 million KRW per employee.

On the 1st, Korea CXO Research Institute, a corporate analysis specialist, conducted a survey targeting about 1,700 listed companies in Korea and some unlisted companies that submitted business reports last year. The survey found that 68 companies had an average annual salary per employee, including non-registered executives and regular staff, exceeding 100 million KRW.

CJ ranked first with an average of 494.07 million KRW per person, while Orion Holdings ranked second with 323.80 million KRW.

Top 10 companies in South Korea by average annual salary of domestic employees last year. Photo by Korea CXO Institute

The total number of employees at CJ, the holding company of CJ Group, is 53. The high average annual salary is analyzed to be due to the inclusion of compensation for non-registered executives such as Chairman Lee Jae-hyun (6.717 billion KRW).

Orion Holdings, the holding company of Orion Group, has about 10 employees. The owners, Chairman Dam Cheol-gon and Vice Chairman Lee Hwa-kyung, work as non-registered executives and reportedly each received over 1 billion KRW.

Following them were ▲DSC Investment (221.33 million KRW) ▲Celltrion Healthcare (214.02 million KRW) ▲Bukook Securities (206.41 million KRW). Samsung Electronics, ranked first in domestic sales, was 26th with an average employee salary of 127 million KRW.

The total labor cost of employees at the 68 companies with an average salary over 100 million KRW was 23.7669 trillion KRW, an increase of about 3 trillion KRW (15%) from 20.6711 trillion KRW the previous year.

The number of employees at these companies increased by 3,489 (1.8%) from 194,833 to 198,322.

Top 30 Companies by Average Annual Salary in Large Corporations. Photo by Saramin

When limiting the survey to the top 100 domestic companies by sales and comparing employee compensation last year, Samsung Electronics had the highest pay.

According to Saramin, among the top 100 domestic companies by sales (excluding financial companies), 15 companies had an average employee salary exceeding 100 million KRW.

Excluding Samsung Electronics, SK Energy and SK Telecom each had an average salary of 121 million KRW, followed by SK General Chemicals (117 million KRW), SK Incheon Petrochem (113 million KRW), and S-Oil (109.24 million KRW).

Length of service was longest at Kia Motors (22.1 years), KT (21.6 years), SK Energy (21 years), SK General Chemicals (19.6 years), and POSCO (19.1 years).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.