A Country Without Retirement, a Generation of Marginalized Elderly [Lee Geun-myeon's Current Affairs Latte] (2026.05.23.)

Korean society regards elderly people who continue working with pity. Japanese society, however, takes a different view: it perceives such a situation as one in which "society has preserved a role for them." Both involve labor in old age, yet one is the outcome of neglect while the other is the result of deliberate design.

This raises an important question: is it the absence of retirement that is problematic, or is it the failure to prepare meaningful roles for people after retirement?

Japan has taken a retirement-free society as its premise and redesigned the intensity and form of labor accordingly. Korea, without acknowledging the reality of a retirement-free existence, has instead pushed the elderly outside the boundaries of institutional support.

This divergence is also evident in intergenerational conflict. In Korea, the claim that "elderly workers are taking jobs away from young people" surfaces readily. Japan, by contrast, has structurally separated simple, supervisory, and guidance-oriented work performed by older workers from the specialized and technical work performed by younger workers, ensuring that the two do not compete. The issue has been approached as one of division of roles rather than competition.

Korea must now make a choice: whether to compel retirement, or to create conditions under which retirement becomes a genuine option. Whether to expand automation unconditionally, or to preserve human labor in certain domains. Whether to focus solely on efficiency, or to consider the sustainability of society as a whole.

The direction in which preparation must begin is clear. First, an income structure must be established that guarantees a minimum standard of living after retirement. Old age in which survival is impossible without continued employment is not a choice—it is coercion. Second, employment for the elderly must be redefined not as short-term, relief-oriented projects but as socially meaningful roles. As Japan has done, it is necessary to design which jobs should be preserved, which forms of labor should be adjusted, and which intensities should be moderated. Third, a transformation in the awareness of all members of society is required. The elderly are not a burden but a resource, and labor is not the exclusive province of the young. Middle-aged and older workers must not defer the question of their own old age as a purely personal matter but must become agents of institutional change. Young people, too, must confront the reality that a retirement-free society is their own future.

A country without retirement is not a failed country. What has failed is a society that has enabled people to live longer while making no provision for how those longer lives should be lived. Japan has prepared, however imperfectly. Korea has yet even to acknowledge the problem.

The absence of retirement is not the problem. The problem is old age without choice.

https://n.news.naver.com/article/243/0000098166?sid=110