저소득만 제자리 다른 계층은 소득올라…격차 커졌다

The income of the bottom 20 percent of households ended its year-and-a-half long decline in the second quarter of this year.
However, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened as the remaining 80 percent of households' income went up.
Our Seo Eunkyung has the details.
According to Statistics Korea on Thursday, the average monthly household income for the second quarter was about 3,890 U.S dollars, up 3-point-8 percent on year.
But not every citizen enjoyed the increase.
While the income of the bottom 20 percent of households stayed the same on year, the other 80 percent of households saw their income increase by between 3-point-2 percent and 6 percent.
The increase in the number of unemployed households in the bottom 20% was seen as one of the main reasons why it didn't see an increase.
Only 29-point-8 percent of households in the bottom 20% contained people in employment, down from 32-point-6 percent in the same period last year.
Wage income for the bottom 20 percent of households fell by around 15 percent on-year, but income from the self-employed increased by almost 16 percent over the same period.
The income gap between Korea's wealthiest and poorest citizens widened to its biggest margin since 2003, with the top 20 percent of earners taking home an average of 5-point-3 times the income of the bottom 20 percent.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Korea reported on Thursday that household debt rose by 4-point-3 percent on-year to reach a record high 1,289 billion U.S. dollars in the second quarter.
Seo Eunkyung, Arirang News.