Almost half of South Korean women aged between 15 and 54 and married with under age children earn less than 2 million won every month, according to data released by Statistics Korea.

The data revealed that there are 5.063 million married and working women with children under 18 as of April this year. Among them, 49.1 percent earned a monthly wage of less than 2 million won ($1,780). This was 10.8 percentage points higher than the percentage of overall workers -- both men and women -- earning less than 2 million won.

Most, or 37.6 percent of the working mothers earned between 1 and 2 million won. Some 25.3 percent earned between 2 and 3 million won.

Among all married women with children, 58.2 percent were economically active, while 56.7 percent were employed, both figures showing a 0.6 percentage points increase from a year ago.

The report also showed that working mothers were less likely to be in work when their children were younger, and when they had more than one child, with 57.9 percent of mothers with one child being employed, compared to 56.2 percent of those with two and 52.1 percent with three.

The employment rate among mothers with a child under 6 was 48.1 percent, compared to 68.1 percent of those with children aged between 13 and 17. Almost 60 percent of those with children between 7 and 12 had jobs.

The report further showed that moms worked on average of 37.2 hours a week, and the hours were shorter for those with younger children.

The report said 79.6 percent of all working moms between 15 and 54 were salary workers, and out of them 70.2 percent were regular employees, whereas the other 29.8 percent were temporary employees or day-to-day workers. 

By Choi Ji-won (jwchoikr@heraldcorp.com)