(Pension Future Forum Future Generations Network Statement) On the Debate Hosted by the Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action (November 6, 2026)
(Embargoed until 2:00 p.m., November 6, 2026)
(Youth Organization of the Pension Future Forum)
Statement of the “Future Generations Network”
Before You Invoke the Name of Citizens,
Answer to Citizens
On the “Citizens’ Testimony Forum”
of the Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action
The Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action is reportedly holding “Thinking It Through with Citizens: The Right Way to Overhaul the Basic Pension” on November 6, and is once again talking about pension reform in the name of citizens. Yet before it invokes the name of citizens, there is a question it must answer first.
The Pension Future Forum has consistently raised concerns about the balance of the learning materials and information provided to the citizen representatives during the public deliberation on pension reform in the 21st National Assembly. The judgment of the citizen representatives cannot help but be shaped by which materials they saw and which explanations they heard. That is precisely why the starting point of public deliberation must be balanced information and diverse participants.
Yet the makeup of this event raises the same concern again. The witnesses at the “Citizens’ Testimony Forum” are a Basic Pension beneficiary, a representative of a seniors’ labor union, a representative of the retirees’ branch of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union, and the head of a youth organization. The discussion that follows likewise centers on the Social Welfare Committee of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, social welfare academics, labor research groups, and officials of government employees’ unions.
This is not to say that these voices are not the voices of citizens. The problem is whether one can gather only these voices and call them “the will of the citizens.” The Basic Pension is not a program that decides only how much more to pay current beneficiaries. It is also a matter for young people and future generations, who will have to bear its cost through taxes over the coming decades as the elderly population surges.
If so, then at the very least the voices arguing for fiscal sustainability, intergenerational equity, and an overhaul of the Basic Pension’s 70% eligibility criterion must also be given a full hearing at the same event. Listening to the demands of beneficiaries matters. But a public deliberation that leaves out the voices of those who will bear its cost is only half a deliberation.
Moreover, the Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action still has questions it has not answered. The Pension Future Forum
has called on the Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action to give a public answer regarding its recent
“interpretation of the National Pension’s income replacement rate by OECD standards” and its January 30, 2023, “Stop Killing the National Pension” statement,
through the Forum’s October 11 “Statement” and November 1 “Commentary.”
The relevant statement and commentary are available on the Pension Future Forum website.
Before starting a new “dialogue with citizens,” the proper order of genuine social dialogue is to first answer, with data and evidence, the objections already raised.
The Future Generations Network will watch this event closely. We will examine what materials are provided, whether the fiscal burden is explained alongside the benefits of expanding the Basic Pension, and whether the problems of the current 70% eligibility criterion and the burden on future generations are given equal weight. And we will also watch whether the outcome is once again packaged under the name of “the will of the citizens.”
Citizens are not a pretext that a particular organization summons whenever it needs one. Current beneficiaries are citizens, workers are citizens, and the young people who will bear the cost for decades to come are citizens too. The moment one gathers the voices of like-minded people and calls them “the will of the citizens,” public deliberation becomes an event whose conclusion has already been decided.
We call on the Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action:
Answer the questions raised by the Pension Future Forum first. And if you truly wish to discuss the Basic Pension in the name of citizens, put arguments that differ from your own, and the voices of future generations, on the same table.
The name of citizens is not an ornament for justifying policy. Genuine public deliberation begins not when we hear the voices we want to hear, but when we also hear the voices that are uncomfortable to hear.
November 6, 2026
Youth Organization of the Pension Future Forum, Future Generations Network
