(Pension Future Forum Position on Professor Nam Chan-seop's Slow News Column) Basic Pension Reform, Replace the Deceptive 'More for the Lower, Less for the Upper' With a Basic Income for Older People! (Posted September 15, 2026)

(The Pension Future Forum

hereby requests a public

explanation regarding

the grounds for the

claims made in

this article—claims that Professor Nam

Chan-seop has made and

still continues to

make—concerning the ratio of pension

expenditure to GDP,

for the following reasons.)

(The following content is quoted from

Professor Nam Chan-seop's

column in Slow News.)

"Group with increasing expenditure?

In reality, it is at most around 40%.

There have been remarks from government economic ministries that allow one to guess the background of that change.

Namely, while Basic Pension expenditure is currently 23.1 trillion won, by 2040 it will reach 48 trillion won, which is double the current amount.

The current Basic Pension expenditure of 23.1 trillion won is approximately 0.9% of GDP.

However, according to the Fifth National Pension financial projection, GDP in 2040 is projected to be 4,002 trillion won.

Therefore, the 48 trillion won for the Basic Pension in 2040 would be 1.2% of that year's GDP; while this is an increase from now, it is not a very large increase.

Then why do the economic ministries speak of Basic Pension expenditure in absolute amounts rather than as a ratio to GDP?

I believe this is enough to arouse suspicion that the intention is to shrink the scale of expenditure by speaking as though Basic Pension expenditure were increasing sharply."

Including in

the Slow News column quoted

above, whose link is attached,

Professor Nam Chan-seop has all along argued,

citing the fact that

the expenditure ratio of our

public pensions relative to GDP

is less than 10%,

that public pension expenditure can be

significantly increased.

He has made nearly identical claims in the Fifth National Pension Financial Estimation Committee of 2023,

the Advisory Committee to the 21st

National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform, and the Advisory Committee

to the 22nd National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform.

In the Advisory Committee to the 22nd National Assembly Special Committee

on Pension Reform,

an estimate by Advisory Committee Member

Yun Suk-myung—based on data received from the

government—that Korea's public pension expenditure

ratio relative to GDP would exceed 15%,

had its distribution blocked several times,

but as that content was included in

Committee Member Yun Suk-myung's

presentation materials at the tenth advisory committee meeting,

which was the final meeting,

it was finally possible to leave it as an official

National Assembly record.

The Pension Future Forum hereby puts the following questions publicly.

Despite these official

data submissions,

why does Professor Nam Chan-seop—

why!—

still claim that Korea's public pension

expenditure ratio

relative to GDP is low?

(This is because,

according to official government

financial projection data, even if the

current Basic Pension

is maintained as is,

the ratio of the Basic Pension

relative to GDP is estimated to reach

the 3% level in the long term.)

(A capture of the relevant section from the presentation materials of the tenth meeting of the Advisory Committee to the

22nd National Assembly Special Committee on

Pension Reform is attached as a file.)

https://slownews.kr/166386