A factory worker handles manufacturing equipment at Gumi National Industrial Complex in North Gyeongsang Province in this undated file photo. Korea Times file

Park Eung-kyu, a factory worker at a medium-sized enterprise, says he feels discouraged whenever he reads news about Korea's increasing wealth, which he believes is not reflected in his much more slowly growing income.

"I get gloomy about being a possible dropout in this country where the average income keeps rising after reaching $30,000, while I have been earning less for years," he said, comparing his salary to the gross national income (GNI) per capita.

Park said he earned only about 40 million won ($27,460) in 2024 after working more than 10 years at his current job.

But the GNI per capita, which represents the average earnings of a country's people and businesses both domestically and internationally, came to $36,624 in 2024, according to recent data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). The 2024 figure marked a year-on-year increase for two consecutive years: 2.7 percent in 2023 and 1.2 percent in 2024.

Korea is among the top six countries worldwide with a population exceeding 50 million as well as GNI per capita higher than $30,000. The other five are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

"All these economic data are far from my tight budget that weighs heavily on me. This makes me unhappy," Park said.

Korea ranked 52nd out of 134 countries in the 2024 World Happiness Report.

Park is hardly alone when it comes to many salaried Korean workers who deem that GNI and other data concerning the country's wealth do not sufficiently address their financial distress and unhappiness.

The data collides with Korea's low rankings in terms of happiness in multiple surveys taken in and outside the country.

The nation ranked 52nd out of 134 countries in the World Happiness Report released by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network in 2024.

Citing an OECD survey, Statistics Korea also said Korea's average satisfaction with life decreased in 2023 for the first time and ranked 33rd out of the 38 OECD member nations.

The agency said the country scored 6.4 points on a 10-point scale, down 0.1 points from the year before and remaining lower than the OECD average of 6.69 points.

Office workers ride an escalator during a lunch break at a conglomerate's headquarters in Seoul in this undated file photo. Yonhap

Many economists said Koreans in general are interpreting economic data in widely differing ways, as the dwindling population leads to "statistical illusion."

"Such an illusion unfortunately may get more serious in coming years, as the demographic crisis is deepening," Inha University economics professor Shin Il-soon said.

The professor explained that GNI per capita is calculated by dividing the total GNI by the number of people. "And the smaller the population, the higher the GNI per capita we are likely to have, under a condition that total GNI remains little changed."

He also noted that Korea's population declined for the fifth consecutive year through 2024, with a net decrease of more than 450,000 that year.

The number accounted for approximately 0.9 percent of the nation's population of 51.2 million. This pace of decline is anticipated to accelerate in coming years, according to Statistics Korea.

Hanyang University economics professor Ha Joon-kyung pointed out that "statistical illusion" also comes from the fact that GNI includes not only individual outcome but also corporate productivity.

In Korea, corporate productivity depends heavily on conglomerates, which make up only 14 percent of the country's total workforce.

"Simply put, it is a small pool of big businesses that largely contribute to a country's wealth, which therefore is unrelated to the general financial well-being of the people," Ha said.

With regard to the conglomerates, Shin Se-don, a professor emeritus of economics at Sookmyung Women's University, assessed that the "increasing wealth divide is attributable to people's dissatisfaction with life in contrast to improvement in wealth-related data."

Shin referred to a Korea Enterprises Federation report released in February, concerning international wage comparisons.

The total annual salary paid by large corporations in Korea, excluding overtime pay, amounted to $87,130 in 2022.

The amount was the fifth-highest among the 22 surveyed countries. In particular, it was 8.2 percent higher than the EU average of $80,536 and 52.9 percent higher than Japan's $56,987.

In terms of wage levels at large corporations relative to per capita gross domestic product (GDP), Korea ranked third with 156.9 percent, after Greece with 166.7 percent and France with 160.6 percent.

Separate data from Statistics Korea showed conglomerates paid an average annual salary of 59.1 million won in 2022, much higher than 28.6 million won paid by small and medium-sized companies.

"It is evident that most of the wage workers feel discouraged by the unthinkable amount of salary that employees get from large firms," Shin said.

However, when asked whether employees of major conglomerates have higher satisfaction levels than those at smaller firms, the professor said it was "unlikely."

He said unhappiness in Korea is linked to the extreme competitiveness of society and that highly paid workers experience increasing emotional distress as they climb up the ladder.