[Open World] Concerns Surrounding the National Pension (February 3, 2026)

The National Pension has recently attracted considerable attention. This is due to the role of the National Pension Fund in the formulation of measures to address a situation in which the depreciation of the Korean won appears to be becoming the new normal.

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Concerns have also been raised that government influence over the Fund Management Committee will grow further, given that the Vice Minister of the newly established Ministry of Planning and Budget—created through the restructuring of government organizations—has been added as a government-appointed member of the committee. Moreover, as the outcome of a closely watched committee meeting has been sealed until 2030, calls for the disclosure of the meeting's proceedings are intensifying.

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Dr. Shin Seung-ryong of the Korea Development Institute (KDI), an advisor to the National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform, has estimated the National Pension's open-group unfunded liability—the amount insufficient to pay benefits—at approximately 3,009 trillion won.

Even if the fund investment return rate is raised by 1 percentage point every year over the next 70 years, the unfunded liability would still amount to 1,236 trillion won. The National Assembly Budget Office has also announced that the unfunded liability stands at 1,820 trillion won.

This is an indication that the National Pension in its current form is unsustainable.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund called for structural reform of the National Pension. This is because national debt is projected to reach 200% of GDP.

Nonetheless, the political establishment and the President of the National Pension Service (NPS) insist that the National Pension's sustainability can be secured through sound fund management alone. This is asserted even as they reject the introduction of an automatic adjustment mechanism—an urgently needed structural reform.

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The Fund Management Committee, which had been operating with the voices of experts duly reflected, is now being buffeted by political headwinds. This is because the Ministry of Planning and Budget recently revised the regulations governing pension fund management to suit the preferences of the policy authorities—expanding the proportion of domestic investment while reducing overseas investment, and, in order to enhance returns, effectively compelling currency hedging, a practice that had not previously been undertaken.

The following is a comment by Professor Kim Hak-ju of Dongguk University, an advisor to the National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform. "If the old form of state-directed finance operated through the Ministry of Finance, directly instructing financial institutions on the allocation and direction of funds, the new form of state-directed finance today exercises structural influence over the market through the National Pension as its axis, using public interest and responsible investment guidelines as its instruments."

The policy authorities must remain open to such concerns.

This is because the National Pension must not serve as a policy instrument of any particular administration.

The time has come to guarantee the political independence of the National Pension in fulfillment of its original purpose: securing old-age income.

(The print version has been attached as a file.)

https://n.news.naver.com/article/081/0003613814?sid=110