(Newsis — Pension Future Forum Coverage) With the General Election a Year and a Half Away…Will the Basic Pension Overhaul Plan Clear the National Assembly? [Basic Pension Overhaul ③] (2026.09.01.)

Ministry of Health and Welfare Announces Basic Pension Overhaul Plan…

Targets Legislation Within the Year
With the General Election a Year and a Half Away…

Directly Tied to the Older Vote, Passage Uncertain
Civil Society Groups and Academic Societies Also Raise Opposition One After Another

The government announced its Basic Pension overhaul plan together with next year's budget bill, but a National Assembly hurdle — amending the law — remains before it can actually take effect. In particular, with the general election just a year and a half away, whether the political community will cooperate remains uncertain.

According to the '2027 Ministry of Health and Welfare Budget Bill' passed at the Cabinet meeting on the 1st, the Ministry aims to complete Basic Pension-related legislation within this year and implement the overhaul plan in April of next year.

The core of the overhaul plan is to maintain the current method of paying benefits to the bottom 70% by income among older people, while providing additional amounts to low-income older people. It changes the current method, under which all beneficiaries receive an identical fixed amount, into a form that pays differentiated amounts divided into three income bands.

For older people in the bottom 30% or below by income, an additional 30,000 won will be added next year, bringing the payment to 380,000 won. The 30–45% band will receive 359,000 won, reflecting the inflation rate, while the 45–70% band will be frozen at the current 350,000 won.

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However, in light of the history of sharply confrontational pension reform and last year's parametric reform of the National Pension, which was reached only with great difficulty, this too is expected to go through a difficult labor in the National Assembly.

At the Special Committee on Pension Reform meeting held on the 21st of last month as well, criticism emerged that the process of preparing the government's Basic Pension overhaul plan had lacked social discussion and public deliberation. Even though the meeting was held for the first time in roughly five months, criticism continued that the government had presented no plan, such as a scenario for injecting state fiscal funds related to National Pension reform.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare also stated that a comprehensive discussion considering the National Pension and other schemes is needed for the Basic Pension overhaul, meaning the structural reform could take longer than expected. A Ministry official said, "since the multi-layered old-age income security system, including the National Pension system, must be considered together, we judged that the process of social discussion had been insufficient."

Civil society groups and academic societies alike, regardless of whether they stand on the income-security side or the fiscal-stability side, are also raising their voices in opposition to the Basic Pension overhaul.

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The Pension Future Forum and others, which emphasize the fiscal soundness of pensions, have announced a campaign opposing the legislation.

Yoon Seok-myung, Research Fellow Emeritus at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA), who leads the Pension Future Forum, said, "the Basic Pension overhaul plan that has just been announced is content that applies for the single year 2027 alone — a case of merely tacking on an extra growth, which only ends up costing more," and

"for the sake of our country's future, this is an indefensible overhaul plan. It seems we need to fight to keep it from passing," he said．

https://n.news.naver.com/article/003/0014162041?sid=102