Slower gains at bottom widen Korea’s wage gap

A decadelong decline in South Korea’s wage inequality has gone into reverse, driven largely by weaker growth among low-income workers since 2020, a recent study showed Thursday. Workers in the top decile earned 3.619 times as much as those in the bottom decile in 2024, up from 3.485 times in 2020, according to the study, “An Analysis of the Shift in Wage Inequality Trends in Korea.” The gap nevertheless remained substantially narrower than in 2010, when the highest-paid 10 percent earned 5.517 t