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How the pay comparison is computed

Every figure on these pages comes from pay data that listed filers reported themselves in their annual reports. There are two measures, namely average pay per employee and average pay per registered director.

The employee measure regroups the filed per-division pay totals and headcounts into a headcount-weighted recomputation, because many filers report no overall row and the recomputation covers far more companies on one footing. The registered-director measure uses the filed per-person average as it stands.

The industry figure leads with the median of company values and shows the headcount-weighted mean beside it. Industries where the two differ sharply do exist, so neither is shown alone, and the weighted mean always carries the largest filer's share of headcount.

Classifications with thin samples, thin response coverage, or figures close to a few individuals' pay publish no industry figure. Company rows remain visible in those cases, with the reason standing where the value would be.

Financial and insurance filers, real estate investment trusts, special purpose acquisition companies, and foreign-incorporated listings stay out of the main table. Filed values with doubtful units or currency questions show a reason instead of an amount, and companies with a different fiscal year end carry their closing month.

Filings can be corrected. The data is re-queried for a period after the statutory deadline so corrections land, and the reference fiscal year is the most recent one with sufficiently complete filings.

Before reading this table

Industry groupings and names follow the tenth revision of the Korean Standard Industrial Classification, opened by Statistics Korea under the Korea Open Government Licence attribution requirement, with minor typographic adjustments.