(Pension Future Forum 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)
Pension Future Forum Statement
Do Not Put Citizens Out Front—
Speak in Your Own Name
— The Pension Future Forum’s Position on the Citizens’ Testimony Forum and Debate “Thinking It Through with Citizens: The Right Way to Overhaul the Basic Pension”
The Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action, the Social Welfare Committee of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, and the Committee for Grand Social Reform under the Prime Minister are reportedly holding a citizens’ testimony forum and debate titled “Thinking It Through with Citizens: The Right Way to Overhaul the Basic Pension” at the Government Complex Seoul on November 6.
The Pension Future Forum begins by correcting the name of this event. It is not a place for citizens, not a place for thinking things through, and not a place for testimony. And we ask: Who gave them the authority to represent “citizens”?
The Conclusion Came Before the Testimony
In their November 4 media advisory, the organizers had already declared flatly that the Basic Pension overhaul must proceed “by solidifying a collective, society-wide system of support rather than relying on individual effort.” They announced the conclusion two days before the testimony. Putting the title “thinking it through together” on an event that wrote the answer first and then called citizens up to the stand is a deception.
From the Witness Stand to the Moderator’s Chair, One Family from the Same Camp
Of the four places at the witness stand, only one is taken by someone without an organizational title: a Basic Pension beneficiary. The others are the vice chair of the National Senior Workers’ Union of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the head of the (preparatory) Retirees’ Branch of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and the head of the Welfare State Youth Network. Even the place reserved for young people went to an ideological association. In a 2014 introduction to the group written by its secretary general, this organization declared its mission to be building “a universalist welfare state grounded in the ideology of social democracy” in Korean society, and stated that it had jointly held a youth academy and a Basic Pension lecture with the Social Welfare Committee of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a co-organizer of this event. What took the witness stand was not youth but ideology.
The moderator is a subcommittee head of the co-organizing Committee for Grand Social Reform, and the presentation is given by the policy committee chair of the organizing group. Both are figures who have long been deeply involved in People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy while preaching the logic of a particular camp. At the discussion table sit People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a former head of the Democratic Labor Research Institute, an officer of the Federation of Government Employees’ Unions, and a scholar who, on the nomination of the Democratic Party of Korea, co-chaired the Private Advisory Committee of the National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform. A figure who led an advisory body of the National Assembly has stepped outside it to speak for the position of one camp. Where are the experts who would speak to the program’s sustainability and intergenerational equity?
The side that set up the stage is moderating, presenting, and even filling the witness stand. Who chose these people, and by what criteria?
“Citizens” at the Government Complex: A Textbook Case of State-Sponsored Deliberation
At the government complex in Changseong-dong, a government committee under the Prime Minister is co-hosting the event, and a subcommittee head of that committee is serving as moderator. A government body lent its venue and its authority, like-minded groups and organizations of the two major labor confederations filled the seats, and then the sign “citizens” was hung over it all. This is not citizen participation but state-sponsored deliberation. The moment a civic group borrows the government’s name and space to put “citizens” out front, it becomes a government-aligned group.
The organizers criticize the government’s overhaul plan as having been “pushed through unilaterally without a democratic decision-making process.” Is it democratic decision-making, then, for a committee inside the government to gather its own side at a government complex to pressure a plan from a ministry of that same government? This is not simple criticism of the government. It is nothing but co-opted deliberation that outsources a fight over policy direction within the administration in the name of “citizens.”
Judge Yourselves by the Standards You Set
The organizers’ media advisory scolds the government, saying that “gathering the views of diverse stakeholders and a process of citizen participation and deliberation are essential,” and even cites the citizen deliberation of the National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform as an example. Yet this event has no random sampling, no equal footing for opposing views, and no balanced learning materials. Without meeting a single one of the requirements for deliberation it demands of the government, it merely borrows the name “citizens.”
The same goes for the question of required funding. The organizers criticize the government for presenting only a single-year plan without even a medium-term fiscal outlook. As the organizers themselves have stated, in 2027 the Basic Pension will have about 8 million beneficiaries and require a budget of 25.7 trillion won. To build the “collective system of support” the organizers call for on top of this, they must first put forward projections of the expected costs for 2040, 2050, and beyond. Declining to apply to one’s own demands the yardstick one held up to the government—that is precisely a double standard.
The Coercive Nature of the “Testimony Forum” Format
“Testimony forum” is a name usually given to gatherings where victims expose the truth of what happened. Cast a policy debate in this format, and a different view becomes a denial of harm, and a rebuttal is dismissed as an attack on victims. But overhauling the Basic Pension is not a matter of finding victims and passing judgment on perpetrators.
Putting citizens in the front row while organizations push their conclusion from behind is the formula that the mobilization politics of the street has long used. Only the physical force is missing; the structure of using citizens as a shield to pressure policymakers and branding dissent as “voices against citizens” is the same. By the same method, a “testimony forum” for the opposite view could just as easily be held. Would those conclusions, then, also become “the will of the citizens”? The moment each group mobilizes its own “citizens,” divisions in the community will deepen and only conflict will be amplified.
The Pension Future Forum does not call its arguments “the will of the citizens.” We speak in the name of the Pension Future Forum, and we simply take responsibility for the grounds and consequences of what we say.
Do Not Hide Responsibility Behind Citizens
The Basic Pension takes tens of trillions of won in taxes every year, and its design binds in advance even the burden on generations decades from now. Projections and verification should therefore be left to the domain of experts, and the choice among the alternatives presented, and the consequences of that choice, must ultimately rest with the government and the National Assembly. Summoning citizens only when it suits you, without any firm principle, is not responsible politics but a shifting of responsibility.
The Pension Future Forum Demands
One. The Public Pension Strengthening People’s Action and People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy must correct the label of this event from a “citizens’ testimony forum” to their own policy debate. Stop using citizens as a pretext.
Two. The Committee for Grand Social Reform under the Prime Minister must explain how it came to lend the name of a government committee and a government complex to an event of a particular camp, and apologize for mobilizing government-aligned groups in the name of citizens.
The moment the organizers package hand-picked voices as “the will of the citizens” and hide behind them, citizen participation degenerates into a means of evading responsibility. What genuine pension reform requires is not the name of mobilized citizens, but verifiable numbers and the responsibility one must bear with one’s own name on the line.
November 6, 2026
Pension Future Forum
