earticle

영어

This paper explores how compensation practices in Korean companies in 2000s had been changed, focusing on principles of base-pay, group-level performance-based plan, ESOP and stock-option, and wage increase. For the purpose, the WPS(Workplace Panel Survey) data by the KLI(Korean Labor Institute) in 2003, 2005 and 2007 were chosen and analyzed here. There was a general expectation that the importance of seniority in determining base-pay, compared to the importance of job in itself or job-holder's ability, would have been decreased in 2000s. However, it seems that the data do not support the expectation. For the period, the portion of establishments running group level performance-based bonus plan and the portion of establishments which had ever distributed the bonus to their employees among the recent 3 years were decreased significantly. The portion of establishments providing the ESOP remained around 10% and the share of the ESOP also remained around 10%. Regarding wage level, the size of average wage increase for high school graduates of blue-collar at entry level is larger than that of wage increase for 4-year university graduates. Taken together, it seems that no significant changes in compensation practices occurred in the Korean establishments in 2000s. Still two thirds of the Korean establishments are based on the seniority-based wage scheme. The importance of pay-for-performance in Korea in 2000s is circumscribed considerably.