One in every 4 chief executives at South Korea’s top listed conglomerates will likely be exempt from disclosing his or her salary, despite the government’s latest move to revamp rules to shore up corporate transparency, data showed Thursday.

The number of registered chief executive officers at the top 50 family-owned large enterprises known as chaebol, stood at 38, according to the data compiled by the Financial Supervisory Service. The remaining 12 were either not registered C-suite members or registered with one of the conglomerate’s smaller affiliates, the FSS said.

On Tuesday, parliament approved a bill requiring the country’s major companies to disclose how much their senior executives get paid, and if they are registered chiefs or auditors whose annual salaries exceed 500 million won ($443,000).

But critics have complained that the bill won’t serve the purpose of overhauling their compensation system, which is blamed for widening unfair pay gaps with lower employees, because it only obligates registered executives to abide by the new rule.

They noted that every company in the United States must go public on the individual salary information for the top five CEOs, whether they’re registered or not.

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-hee, South Korea’s richest man, is currently not a registered CEO, and neither is his only son Jae-yong, who is the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co. Lee Myung-hee, the chairman of retail giant Shinsegae, is also not registered, and his son Yong-jin stepped down from the registered members this year, the data showed.

According to the revised bill, those expected to reveal their salaries are Chey Tae-won of SK Group, Chung Mong-koo of Hyundai Motor Group, Kim Seung-youn of Hanwha Group, as well as several others. (Yonhap News)