Female Bankers Earn More Than W100 Million for 1st Time

The average annual salary of female bank workers surpassed W100 million for the first time last year, a full decade later than their male counterparts (US$1=W1,311).

According to the business reports of Korea's top four commercial banks, the average yearly pay per woman at KEB Hana Bank was W102 million and at KB Kookmin Bank W101 million. At Woori and Shinhan banks their salary still lagged slightly at W94 million and W90 million.

The increase came chiefly because women now work in banks longer than they used to and therefore qualify for promotion. It seems many women now decide not to quit when they have a child thanks to childcare benefits offered by their employers, and performance-based reward systems ensure that women make better money and rise to higher positions.

The wage gap with their male counterparts is also narrowing. In 2019, the average annual salary of male workers at KEB Hana was 1.53 times higher than their female counterparts' but that shrank to 1.39 times last year.

At KB Kookmin, the wage gap narrowed from 1.44 times to 1.34 times over the period, from 1.59 times to 1.47 times at Shinhan and from 1.45 times to 1.26 times at Woori.