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Good practice Imported

South Korea's Public-Sector Gender Employment Disclosure System

South Korea · Seoul · See the South Korea profile · See the Seoul profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 26% 85/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2021, Korea's Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has published annual gender pay-gap data for 340+ state-run institutions. The gap fell from 26.3% (2021) to 20.0% (2024), while the private-sector gap widened to 30.7% over the same period.

26.3 %
Public-sector gender pay gap (2021)
20.0 %
Public-sector gender pay gap (2024)
29 %
Public-sector tenure gap (2021)
19.9 %
Public-sector tenure gap (2024)
30.7 %
Private-sector gender pay gap (not subject to disclosure) (2024)
South Korea's Public-Sector Gender Employment Disclosure System

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF)
Period
2021-present
Keywords
public administration, pay equity, government transparency, HR policy

Context

Since 2021, South Korea's Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) has compiled and published annual gender wage-gap statistics for public institutions - 344 organisations in the 2024 round - under its Gender Employment Disclosure System, alongside a parallel disclosure covering roughly 2,980 large and listed private companies.

Objectives

To create year-on-year public accountability pressure that narrows the gender pay gap in public institutions, and to build the evidence base for extending mandatory disclosure to the private sector.

Activities

Each public institution's average pay by gender and its tenure gap are aggregated and released publicly by MOGEF annually. The government has cited this public-sector track record as the evidence base for a mandatory private-sector wage-disclosure system now being phased in for 2026.

Results

The measured gender pay gap in public institutions fell every year on record: 26.3% (2021), 25.2% (2022), 22.7% (2023) and 20.0% (2024) - men averaging 72.7 million won against 58.2 million won for women in 2024 - while the tenure gap fell from 29% to 19.9% over the same period. Over the same four years, the comparable private-sector gap widened to 30.7% in 2024.

Conclusions

MOGEF and Korean media have pointed to the contrast as evidence linking sustained public disclosure to faster gap-closing, but the public-sector improvement is a correlational trend, not a controlled evaluation, and may partly reflect broader public-sector hiring and promotion policies rather than disclosure alone. Because mandatory private-sector disclosure is still being phased in for 2026, it remains untested whether the same trend will hold once private employers face equivalent transparency requirements.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Administrative data compilation and publication; no additional programme budget is reported.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Running annually since 2021; mandatory private-sector disclosure is being phased in from 2026.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) compiles and publishes the data annually

Conditions for success

  • Mandatory, standardised annual disclosure across all covered public institutions, enabling year-on-year comparison
  • Using the public-sector track record as the explicit evidence base for extending disclosure to large private companies from 2026

Common failure modes

  • The private-sector gender pay gap widened over the same period, showing disclosure alone does not automatically close gaps without a mandate
  • The public-sector improvement may partly reflect broader hiring and promotion policy shifts rather than disclosure itself

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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