Leading automaker Hyundai Motor Co. was the top employer of physically challenged workers among 70 major firms in South Korea in 2020, with their total hiring of disabled people continuing to rise, a corporate tracker said Thursday.

Hyundai Motor, the flagship of No. 5 global automaker Hyundai Motor Group, had 2,108 employees with disabilities last year, which accounted for 3.12 percent of its head count, according to Korea CXO Institute.

The ratio was up from 2.95 percent in 2019, and Hyundai has retained the top spot for three consecutive years.

Global tech titan Samsung Electronics Co. came next with 1,465 disabled workers, which took up 1.5 percent of its workforce, the largest among companies in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

SK Materials Co., a semiconductor and display material subsidiary under SK Group, had the highest ratio of workers with disabilities to its workforce at 3.5 percent, followed by mobile carrier LG Uplus Corp, the state-run Industrial Bank of Korea, IT service firm Samsung SDS Co. and steel giant POSCO with 3.3 percent each.

Those 70 companies had a combined 12,598 handicapped employees as of the end of last year, up 294 from a year earlier, according to Korea CXO Institute.

The institute expected major companies in the country to hire more people with disabilities down the road, in line with the spread of environmental, social and governance (ESG) management. (Yonhap)