Among the U.S. companies, 200 executives were paid more than $2 million annually. Their pay packages included not only monthly salaries, but bonuses and stock options as well.
Out of the 200, the average pay package of the highest-paid 20 executives reached $22.71 million.
Back in Korea, the highest-paid 20 executives out of the 640 who were obligated to reveal their salaries were found to be receiving an average 8.44 billion won.
This shows that the U.S. executives were paid about three times the amount of their Korean counterparts.
But a closer look revealed lesser-known factors that can tip the scale.
The most significant fact is that the U.S. salaries were based mainly on performance, so that they received bonuses or stock options that at times were up to 10 times their basic salary.
As a result, the basic salaries of the executives at the 202 U.S. companies reached only about an average $1.16 million per person.
In Korea, the 640 executives were receiving a similar amount of 1.3 billion won per executive.
The difference was in the basic salary. In Korea, there were few whose bonuses and stock options surpassed their basic salary. At most, it was about twice the amount. Only the Samsung Electronics executives were found to be receiving bonuses three or four times larger than their basic salaries.
