Average Annual Salary at 'Nakao' is About 130 Million KRW... What Are the Differences?

Kakao Surpasses Naver for 3 Consecutive Years
Naver Leads in Salary and Female Wages Excluding Stock Options

The average annual salary per employee last year at Naver and Kakao, the two major domestic portals, was confirmed to be at a similar level.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system (DART) on the 14th, the average employee salary at Kakao and Naver last year was 139 million KRW and 134.49 million KRW, respectively. This average includes the gains from exercising stock options for all employees except registered executives.

In Kakao's case, the average annual salary for executives and employees was 80 million KRW in 2019, trailing Naver's 84 million KRW, but from 2020, Kakao's average employee salary has been higher than Naver's for three consecutive years. It was 108 million KRW in 2020, 172 million KRW in 2021, and 139 million KRW last year, consistently surpassing Naver's 102.48 million KRW in 2020, 129.15 million KRW in 2021, and 134.49 million KRW during the same period.

The CEO compensation last year was also higher for Kakao's CEO Hong Eun-taek at 2.975 billion KRW compared to Naver's Choi Soo-yeon, the general CEO, at 1.1 billion KRW, and Chae Sun-joo, the ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) and external policy CEO, at 2.162 billion KRW.

During the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, capital flowed into big tech companies, causing explosive revenue growth. In this context, Kakao made relatively aggressive investments in labor costs, which is analyzed as the reason for the increase. In fact, Kakao's labor costs surged from 911.9 billion KRW in 2020 to 1.6871 trillion KRW last year.

Naver·Kakao logos [Image source provided by Naver·Kakao]

Since Namgoong Hoon, the former CEO of Kakao who retired last year, agreed with the labor union to increase last year's salary by 15% and this year's salary by 6%, the wage gap between Kakao and Naver is expected to widen further this year.

Naver's labor and management tentatively agreed on a 4.8% wage increase this year. A Naver official stated, "This figure does not even meet last year's inflation rate of 5.1% compiled by Statistics Korea," adding, "It is true that there are internal complaints as there is a difference in treatment compared to competitor Kakao."

However, it was revealed that Naver has higher wages for women and a relatively smaller gender wage gap compared to Kakao.

As of 2021, Kakao's gender wage difference showed men earning 217 million KRW, which is 109 million KRW more than women earning 108 million KRW. However, at Naver, men earned 135.88 million KRW, which is 18.46 million KRW more than women earning 117.42 million KRW. Last year, Kakao showed a difference of 79 million KRW (men 173 million KRW, women 94 million KRW), while Naver showed a difference of 30.97 million KRW (men 146.31 million KRW, women 115.34 million KRW).

Of course, this is a simple comparison that does not reflect differences by detailed job types, tasks, rank, employment type, difficulty of work environment, or contribution within the workplace.

Also, excluding gains from exercising stock options, the average salary last year was higher at Naver (120.25 million KRW) than at Kakao (95 million KRW). Furthermore, while Naver's average employee salary steadily increased, Kakao's decreased by 19.2% (33 million KRW) compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile, Kakao dropped from the top spot in the average salary ranking among all its affiliates last year. The new top-ranked affiliate is KakaoBank, which went public in August 2021, with an average employee salary of 164 million KRW last year.

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