식민지기 조선의 임금수준과 임금격차 ―공장임금을 중심으로1)

Abstract

There are two kinds of surveys on wages in colonial Korea: one is on occupational wages, the other is on factory wages. Occupational wages,which have been used by earlier studies, surveyed wages mainly of construction workers or casual laborers, but mostly excluded factory workers. This paper estimates wage levels and wage differentials by ethnicity, age group, and gender using factory wages and compares the results with those of earlier studies. Significant findings include the following: 1) Wage level of factory workers was considerably lower than that of occupational wage earners. 2) There was a downward trend in wages of Korean female factory workers. 3) Wage differentials by ethnic group and gender in factory wages were wider than those of occupational wages. 4)Wage differential by gender in Korean factory workers widened. These findings contrast with those of earlier studies. Attempts are also made to explain where these differences came from. This paper clarifies that occupational wage surveys were confined to workers in the prime of their life in each occupation, while factory wage surveys covered all the workers employed by factories with more than 50 employees. This means that the level and trend of factory wages are affected not only by wage changes but also by the composition of workers. This paper shows that factories employed more child workers (especially females) in the process of industrialization which led to a downward trend in the average wage of Korean female workers.