(JoongAng Ilbo, June 3, 2026) [Joo Jeong-wan's View] The National Pension Is Not a Tool for Propping Up the Stock Market (Posted October 17, 2026)

(“Sharply Expanding Stock Investment with Pension Money”
Basis for the Decision and Content of the Meeting Kept Secret
Who Will Bear the Investment Risk?)

The public's retirement savings are to be put far more heavily into stocks, an investment of a ‘high-risk, high-return’ nature. That is what the government resolved at the National Pension Fund Management Committee on the 28th of last month.

That day the Fund Management Committee decided to raise the target allocation for the National Pension Fund's domestic equity investment to 20.8%. Considering that the target for domestic equity investment stood at 14.4% as recently as last year, this is a radical step.

Up to this point, it was a more or less expected move.

But the Fund Management Committee went a step further. It threw wide open a path for buying more domestic stocks in the short term without being bound by the target (20.8%). This is the committee's decision to greatly widen the permitted range of the so-called ‘strategic asset allocation.’

Until now, this range was 5 percentage points. At this meeting, the specific figure was kept strictly confidential.

The Fund Management Committee cited “concerns about affecting the fair performance of fund management duties and the stability of financial markets” as its reason for nondisclosure. In that case, I would like to ask for what reason the figure used to be disclosed. In a word, it amounts to saying ‘it was right then, and it is wrong now.’

In any case, the prevailing view in the market puts this range at around 10 percentage points. If that is correct, it means no issue will be taken even if the National Pension's domestic equity allocation goes slightly above 30%.

As of the end of March, the National Pension Fund held more than 320 trillion won in domestic stocks. In effect, it can now increase its domestic stock holdings by a further 100 trillion won or more.

Stock investors will applaud the National Pension's expanded investment, but thinking of the old age of the public as a whole, one cannot hide a certain unease.

Jung Eun-kyeong, Minister of Health and Welfare, who chairs the Fund Management Committee, called it “a decision that enhances the profitability and stability of the National Pension Fund while also taking into account its impact on financial markets,” but that is hard to take at face value.

That is because quite a few suspect that it rests on an intention to mobilize the National Pension as a means of propping up the stock market.

Above all, it is hard to say for certain whether this decision will prove positive or negative, over the medium to long term, for the National Pension, the public's retirement savings.

In the same way, no one can say for sure whether the domestic stock market will rise further or fall from here.

If share prices keep rising, all well and good, but if one day they turn downward and the National Pension suffers losses, the public as a whole will have to shoulder that burden.

Looking only at the results for last year and the first quarter of this year, it is true that the National Pension hit the ‘jackpot’ in domestic equity investment.

It goes without saying that stock investment returns cannot always be high. High risk and high return are inseparable, like ‘two sides of the same coin.’

I looked up the National Pension's domestic equity returns over the 15 years from 2011 through last year.

Did it make steady gains every year? Far from it. In fact, it lost money roughly once every three years.

On three occasions it even recorded double-digit negative returns: 2011 (-10.34%), 2018 (-16.77%) and 2022 (-22.76%). In baseball terms, it is the same logic by which even the most powerful hitter sometimes strikes out or grounds out to the infield.

There is one point that must be made clear.

It is that nothing at all has been disclosed about the grounds on which the Fund Management Committee decided to expand stock investment at the meeting on the 28th of last month, or about what was said among its members.

That is why the Pension Future Forum, a group of pension experts, faulted the decision in an emergency statement, saying that “it remains unclear whether raising the domestic equity allocation is a strategic choice grounded in financial projections and long-term return and risk analysis, or an expedient adopted to avoid the immediate burden of selling.”

The minutes of this Fund Management Committee meeting will not be released until the end of May 2030, four years from now — near the very end of the current administration's term. In effect, it means the minutes can be opened only under the next administration. The Ministry of Health and Welfare explains that it took the impact on financial markets into account, but that is hard to accept.

Compare it with the Bank of Korea's Monetary Policy Board. By the Ministry of Health and Welfare's logic, the minutes of the Monetary Policy Board, which sets the base rate, should also be kept from the public for a long time. In reality, they are not. The Monetary Policy Board normally posts its minutes on its website within 20 days for anyone to see. On the day of the meeting, the Governor of the Bank of Korea holds a press conference and explains the background in detail. That is a world apart from the Fund Management Committee, which neither releases its minutes nor holds a press conference.

On this Fund Management Committee meeting, the Pension Future Forum pointed out that “it will be difficult to avoid the suspicion that the National Pension is being used as a convenient instrument for cushioning volatility in the domestic stock market, for managing share prices, or for defending the exchange rate.”

I sincerely hope these suspicions are not true.

For if they are true, it would be a grave wrong against the young generation and future generations.

Joo Jeong-wan, Editorial Writer

https://n.news.naver.com/article/025/0003527605?sid=110