February 3, 2026
SEOUL – College graduates joining South Korea’s conglomerates start with fatter paychecks than their peers in Japan and Taiwan, with the gap widening sharply as company size increases, a study by the Korea Enterprises Federation showed Sunday.
On average, newly hired college graduates in South Korea earn $46,100 a year on a purchasing power parity–adjusted basis, about 24.5 percent more than their counterparts in Japan, who earn $37,047, the KEF said.
Compared with Taiwan’s $29,877, the entry-level pay for Korean college graduates at large firms was 41.1 percent higher.
To gauge and compare real earnings across countries, the report adjusted wages using 2024 purchasing power parity exchange rates and, due to data limitations, applied different definitions of ‘large companies,’ classifying them as firms with at least 500 employees in South Korea and at least 1,000 employees in Japan.
“Korea’s high entry-level wages are being combined with a seniority-based pay system, and reinforced by unions’ uniform and high-rate wage increase demands,” said Ha Sang-woo, head of the economic research division at KEF, which is a lobby body for employers.
Ha also warned that extending the statutory retirement age to 65 — in a labor market where pay and benefits are concentrated at large firms — could reduce job opportunities for young people and further widen inequality between workers at large and small companies.
The report also highlighted that the pay gap between large and small companies is much wider in Korea than in Japan.
With the starting salary at small firms employing 10 to 99 workers set as the benchmark, large firms recorded an index of about 114 in Japan, compared with about 133 in South Korea, indicating that the pay gap between large and small companies — and the extent to which a graduate’s salary depends on firm size — is much greater in Korea.