(Launching the YouTube Channel "Yeongeumtong") Statement of the Youth Committee of the Pension Future Forum (2026. 7. 17.)
[Statement]
We Reject the “False Solidarity”
That Has Forgotten the Spirit of the Constitution
- Declared on Constitution Day:
A True Pension Design and the Pledge of the Young -
Today, July 17, Constitution Day,
the Youth Committee of the Pension Future Forum
solemnly reaffirms the true meaning of “the State’s duty to promote social security and social welfare” set forth in Article 34 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.
The duty of the State is not a populism that wins votes by mortgaging the right of future generations to make a living; genuine solidarity begins with institutional honesty.
Yet the present debate on pension reform is filled with beautiful wordplay that conceals the facts.
Raising the income replacement rate indiscriminately is dressed up as “strengthening the public pension” while an astronomical debt is shifted onto future generations,
and stopgap measures aimed at courting votes are passed off deceptively as “intergenerational solidarity.”
To defend the justice and the intergenerational equity that the Constitution safeguards, we solemnly declare before the public the principles of sound institutional design and fund management that the young seek.
First, a “mathematically honest pension” that restores the principled balance between contributions and benefits is needed.
Genuinely strengthening the public pension does not mean deceiving the young with unsustainable numbers.
An “automatic adjustment mechanism (ABM),” under which the system’s finances adjust automatically to the demographic cliff and to changing economic conditions, must be introduced at once.
The zero-tier Basic Pension should be restructured along a “more for the lower, less for the upper” (下厚上薄) design that concentrates support generously on the poorest older people,
and for the first-tier National Pension, normalizing a multi-tier structure in which benefits are returned fairly in proportion to contributions is the true solidarity that accords with constitutional values.
Second, the National Pension Fund must be managed independently and solely for “the benefit of the insured.”
The National Pension Fund is neither the government’s petty cash nor an instrument of state-directed finance.
Mobilizing the fund as a policy instrument, for foreign-exchange swaps and the like, is a plain breach of duty toward the citizens who are its shareholders.
The political independence of fund management must be fully guaranteed, and it must be built solely upon the principles of professional expertise and the maximization of returns.
Third, the young are taking up the microphone themselves in order to lay out for the public, in full, the distorted realities of the pension system.
Reform begins with disclosing transparently to the public the truth about the pension system hidden behind artful wordplay, and the reality of the debt carried on its books.
Accordingly, in order to expose the essence of the pension system without addition or omission and to communicate directly with the public, we are launching the official YouTube channel “Yeongeumtong.”
As the last bastion of a crumbling public pension, we will not cease to raise the voice of the young. Today, on Constitution Day, which laid the cornerstone of the legal order,
we proclaim that we will no longer be deceived by specious false promises.
Taking the newly launched “Yeongeumtong” as its bridgehead, the Youth Committee of the Pension Future Forum
will act to the very end against every deceptive attempt to trample the rights of the young and of future generations.
July 17, 2026 (Constitution Day)
The Youth Committee of the Pension Future Forum
