Crème de la crème

Samseong Station Seoul
Samseong Station Seoul

 

Lawmaker Oh Je-se, a member of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) and the Strategy and Finance Committee of the National Assembly, analyzed Statistics Korea’s data with the Economic Reform Research Institute. He said on Sept. 14 that the 100 and 100,000 highest income earners in Korea earned an average of 21.299 billion won (US$18.009 million) and 471 million won (US$398,324) in total income per person in 2013, respectively.

Total income can be defined as the sum of earned income, financial income, and lease income. When the financial and lease incomes were taken out of the calculation, the respective amounts added up to 6.638 billion won (US$5.614 million) and 274.4 million won (US$232,018).

The 100,000 persons accounted for 0.5 percent of total income earners in 2013, showing little change in comparison to the three previous years. In the meantime, the median total income was 19.75 million won (US$16,703) during the same period, equivalent to approximately 6 percent of the total income of the top 1 percent and 17.5 percent of that of the top 10 percent.

The average income was 30.36 million won (US$25,676) and the total incomes of the top 1 percent and the top 10 percent exceeded the average income each by a factor 10.7 and 3.7.

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