Wage gap grows between education levels in Seoul

The income gap between college-diploma holders without special capabilities and high-school-graduate professionals widened in 2010 from 17 years earlier, a report showed Wednesday, sparking woes over the deepening gap in education levels. According to a quarterly report by the Bank of Korea, college graduates with no specialized skills had incomes 28.9 percent higher than high-school-graduate professionals in 2010. The number marks a steep rise from a 13.9 percent gap tallied in 1993, the report showed, implying the local job market still values one's education background far above anything else. "The figure implies that (local employers) take education backgrounds more into consideration than one's skills," said Chun Bong-geul, a professor at the University of Seoul. "The gap has been gradually widening since 1997."    By sector, the country's education companies posted the highest wage gap between the two groups, which came to 52 percent between 2008-2010, the report also showed. The wage gap at local manufacturers reached 21.9 percent over the cited period, trailed by construction companies with 18.6 percent and financial firms with the smallest figure at 7 percent. The report, meanwhile, showed the wage gap also existed between genders, with men making 23.9 percent more income on average than their female counterparts in 2010, a tad higher than 21.7 percent tallied in 2007.