[Reporter's Note] The Basic Pension: Beyond Populism, Toward Deliberative Dialogue (March 19, 2026)

(When the Basic Pension was introduced in 2014, those who had colluded with the political power of the day—the very individuals who claimed primary credit for the current Basic Pension's introduction, all while presenting themselves as experts— are now reinventing themselves at lightning speed. They are writing columns and giving interviews arguing that selective disbursement is the appropriate approach.

The majority of these individuals

championed the introduction of a scheme that the then-minister of the responsible ministry had opposed so strenuously as to resign,

and have been treading a path of privilege ever since.

Some, in reward for that contribution,

rose to serve as directors of government research institutes,

while watching

an expert who had opposed the Basic Pension's introduction suffer through tribulation.

Did they merely watch?

The inexorable current of history will know what they did.

This column concludes that the solutions must be entrusted to experts.

Beyond the past conduct of these self-proclaimed experts,

some advisory committee members of the 22nd National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform

have even been advocating to expand the pool of eligible recipients beyond current levels.

The time has come for our society to objectively document the history of pension debates.

A cohort of experts who have reinvented themselves at lightning speed with each change of government

has driven our pension reform history through one regressive deterioration after another;

it is time to document this history faithfully and publish a Jingbirok—a chronicle of chastisement and lessons—of the pension system's regressive deterioration.)

In Korea, approximately 7.08 million elderly individuals aged 65 or older who fall within the bottom 70% of the income distribution receive the Basic Pension. The maximum monthly benefit is 349,700 won.

For single-person households, anyone with a recognized monthly income of 2,470,000 won or less is eligible. This threshold is close to the single-person household median income of 2,564,000 won for this year.

Why, then, the figure of "70%"?

There is no particular rationale. It was an improvised threshold that emerged when former President Park Geun-hye's 2012 campaign pledge to "provide all elderly individuals with 200,000 won per month" ran into budgetary constraints after she took office.

Since then, as elderly individuals' income and asset levels have risen, the Basic Pension eligibility threshold has converged on the median income. The Basic Pension eligibility cutoff, which stood at 59.6% of the single-person household median income in 2015, has risen to 96.3% this year.

This means that both elderly individuals with no income whatsoever and those earning close to the median income are eligible for the Basic Pension.

It is against this backdrop that President Lee Jae-myung wrote on his social media on the 16th, "To reduce elderly poverty—which drives people to suicide—I think the Basic Pension needs to be reformed somewhat," adding

"one possible approach would be to leave existing benefit levels as they are and apply a bottom-up, inverse-taper structure only to future increases—what do you think?"

In effect, he proposed departing from the existing principle of universal welfare and instead introducing a "universal-plus-selective hybrid" welfare model.

Counterarguments have not been absent. The position is that, insofar as the Basic Pension is a pension of the character of a "universal allowance" guaranteeing a minimum standard of living in old age, differential payment based on income runs counter to the scheme's original purpose.

Moreover, the National Pension already incorporates an "income redistribution" function that enhances the benefit-to-contribution ratio for lower-income groups.

The concern is that if the Basic Pension is additionally restructured into a bottom-up, inverse-taper arrangement that provides greater benefits to those with lower incomes, the policy functions of the two schemes will overlap, potentially reducing the overall efficiency of the pension system.

(omitted)

Any reform proposal, however, must be derived with care, taking comprehensive account of multiple dimensions—not only elderly poverty but also the multi-tiered pension structure, equity between taxpayers and non-taxpayers, and national fiscal sustainability.

In the process of solving this complex equation, the most critical danger to guard against is a vote-seeking populist approach from the political sphere.

Instead, would it not be preferable to establish a social deliberation table involving experts, and allow conclusions to emerge through genuine deliberative dialogue?

The time has come to end the ad hoc, politically driven pension reform that has characterized this country's approach.

https://n.news.naver.com/article/417/0001134823?sid=100