By Yi Whan-woo
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is under fire for its slack supervision of affiliated financial institutions following reports they pay higher salaries to employees than Samsung Electronics and other Korean commercial financial firms.
The average annual salary for staff at nine FSC-affiliated firms was 87 million won ($79,000) in 2012, about 24 percent higher than that for Samsung Electronics employees, according to FSC data.
The amount is also 16 percent higher than the average salary paid by private financial companies, such as banks, insurers and credit card issuers.
The data came amid concerns about rising debts at state-run firms. The administration said last month the combined debts at 28 state-run firms reached 353.6 trillion won ($32.3 billion) last year, up 7.5 percent from a year earlier.
The nine FSC-affiliated firms include the Korea Deposit and Insurance Corp., the Korea Exchange, the Korea Securities Depository, the Korea Asset Management Co., and the Korea Finance Corp.
In 2009, they were forced by the government to cut salaries in the wake of the global financial crisis. However, they have since raised payments.
A lot of state-run financial firms either slashed or froze their starting salary, and kept it that way for some years. But, as the impact of the financial turmoil has faded and disgruntled staff raised their voices, salaries recovered to a pre-crisis level.
Some experts said the high income at public financial institutions needs to be reconsidered because their employees enjoy high job security, compared with commercial companies.
“If a public financial firm was established with taxpayer money, the income surplus should be distributed to the public,” Kang Seung-bok, an economist at the Korea Labor Institute, told Yonhap.
The Korea Exchange, the bourse operator, paid its 714 employees the highest average annual salary of 114 million won in 2012. Their average period of employment was 17.2 years, almost twice as long as the average nine years for an employee at a large private enterprise, according to the data.