The average annual salary of registered board members at the nation’s top 100 companies amounted to 850 million won ($753,000) last year, data showed on Thursday.

Employees at those companies received an average annual wage of 57 million won, the Financial Supervisory Service said in its report.

The wage disparity was the highest in tech giant Samsung Electronics Co., where general employees received 78 million won on average last year, while board members each raked in 10.9 billion won, according to the data.

While general workers at South Korea’s largest automaker Hyundai Motor Co. received 89 million won last year, the highest among wage earners, their board members earned 24 times higher at 2.1 billion won on average, the data also showed.

“There must be an immediate improvement on the current wage system, so that shareholders can judge whether such compensation is reasonable,” said Kim Sang-jo, who heads the local civic group Solidarity for Economic Reform.

The wage gap also existed among small and medium enterprises with less than 300 employees that were able to provide only 60 percent of the salary given by bigger players to their workers as of the end of June this year, the financial regulator said.

Smaller firms’ monthly wage averaged 2.65 million won in June while large companies paid an average 4.17 million won, which implies that the sharing of wealth among companies, or the trickle-down effect, is non-existent, market watchers said.

The country’s current minimum wage is 4,580 won per hour, while the Ministry of Employment and Labor set the rate at 4,860 won per hour for next year.

(From news reports)