Why? Why Is Reforming the Government Employees Pension So Urgently Needed at This Point in Time??

(We wish to emphasize that the Pension Future Forum's position — that the National Pension and the Government Employees Pension must be operated on an integrated basis — is entirely different from the content of the KBS article posted earlier! The KBS article cites income redistribution as the sole reason for the need for integrated operation, but the Pension Future Forum has consistently maintained the position that this impasse can only be resolved by converting the National Pension into a 100% income-proportional pension!

This is because, if — instead of converting to an income-proportional pension — both the National Pension and the Government Employees Pension were operated under the principle of "receiving only as much as one has paid in," the sustainability of the pension system after reform could be secured.)

Many Reasons Why the Government Employees Pension Must Urgently Be Integrated with the National Pension

In our society, where the total fertility rate has plummeted to the 0.7 range, the starting point of blaming others rather than oneself, even though stronger pension reform is needed here than in any other country, lies precisely in the separate operation of the public pensions. This is the reason we judge that integrated operation of the public pensions cannot be postponed. We emphasize this once again to remove unnecessary controversy surrounding integrated operation. The integrated operation of the public pensions referred to by the author does not mean merging the individual pension schemes into one. The National Pension and the Government Employees Pension would continue to be operated as separate schemes, but in a manner that is, in substance and in name, run identically — as in Japan. Only in this way can a foundation be laid for properly reforming the incurably ill Government Employees, Military Personnel and Private School Teachers pensions and the National Pension, which has entered the stage of a hard-to-cure disease.

"Pension is blessed money — the money of a lifetime steeped in blood and sweat, fragrant money, money to be respected, noble money, the money of life." As the poet Cho Byung-hwa wrote, now is the time for our society to hasten the integrated operation of the public pensions as its foremost measure for the pension system to be reborn as it truly should be.

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