(2015) Jeong Gyeong-min's Moment-by-Moment: The National Pension, Poised to Become a 2,500 Trillion Won Time Bomb

The political establishment's art of muddying the waters has reached a level of near-perfection. The stated intention was to reform the Government Employees Pension, yet what ended up eviscerated and laid bare was the National Pension. Amid the smokescreen of "raising the National Pension income replacement rate to 50%," the Government Employees Pension has quietly vanished from view. There is no one who would refuse a promise that someone who has earned a monthly salary of one million won will eventually receive 500,000 won in pension benefits rather than 400,000 won. Furthermore, the opposition party whispers that the contribution rate payable now need only rise by 1 percentage point. Yet this enticement conceals a fatal trap. The underlying premise is that the National Pension Fund, built up over the years, will be fully exhausted by 2060. After that point, so the argument goes, National Pension contributions can be levied like taxes on the working-age population of the day to support the elderly, just as is done in Europe. But is it truly as simple as flipping over one's palm?

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