(Pension Future Forum Future Generations Network Statement) Regarding the Debate Hosted by the National Assembly Special Committee on Pension Reform (Posted September 28, 2026)

 (Pension Future Forum Future Generations Network Statement)

 (Ahead of the debate hosted by the 22nd

National Assembly Special Committee on

Pension Reform,

the Future Generations Network,

a youth organization under the

Pension Future Forum, released a statement.)

Treasury Funding for the National Pension:

The Intergenerational Burden

Must Be Made Clear First

  Claims are being made that injecting treasury funds into the National Pension

in advance and raising the fund investment return can achieve fiscal stabilization.

However, the younger generation wishes to ask first:

"Those treasury funds—

whose money are they, really?"

 No one would deny the importance of fund management.

However, we must be cautious about the approach that holds the structural problems of the National Pension can be solved by treasury funding and investment returns alone.

 The national treasury is not free money.

It consists of taxes paid by the people, and if it is raised through debt, it is ultimately money that future generations must repay.

The claim that the pension can be subsidized by the national treasury while reducing the contribution burden is nothing more than a word game in which the contribution burden is simply shifted under the name of taxes.

 The same applies to the fund investment return rate.

While managing the fund well is absolutely necessary, investment is not a deposit, and high returns entail corresponding risks.

Pension finances decades from now cannot be designed based solely on the premise of high returns during favorable market conditions.

 More conservative and cautious assumptions are required, especially when managing a massive fund upon which the people's retirement depends.

Managing the fund well is necessary, but fund management performance cannot replace pension reform.

Even if the lifespan of the fund is extended by injecting national treasury funds and achieving high returns, a question remains.

 "Who ultimately bears those costs and risks?"

 Young people are not demanding that the state refuse to take responsibility.

Before relying on optimistic assumptions about investment returns and the easy fix of treasury funding, the first step must be to show the public transparently who will bear the cost of those funds.

 The core of National Pension reform does not lie solely in delaying the projected date of fund depletion.

It lies in answering who will bear the cost of maintaining current promises.