The Republic of Korea, the Absence of Pension Politics

• In Event: Poster Session: Normative Political Theory

Abstract

The national pension is not only a support system between generations, but it also has a function of redistribution within the generation. Therefore, it is the product of the Republican spirit that emphasizes the virtue of independent citizens who participate in the community based on public interest. However, the national pension system in South Korea operates close to a private pension rather than a public pension. In other words, the system is operating regardless of the pension's original goal of alleviating the issue of elderly poverty. Why is the national pension system in South Korea working on that way? Is it because the Republic of Korea is especially overly concerned with individualistic liberalism? Isn't South Korea a republic?

The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic as stated in Article 1 of the Constitution. Furthermore, the people of South Korea have been correcting the public values whenever they find them lacking or damaged. There are two typical examples. One of them is a candlelight vigil that led the impeachment of the president. During the cold winter months, about 2 million people had held candles and pickets written on "The Republic of Korea is a democratic republic." The other is the nationwide movement to find out the truth about the Sinking of MV Sewol. The sinking of the ferry Sewol resulted in more than 299 deaths. The people of the Republic of Korea urged to find out the truth because they thought it was not just a disaster but an incident that revealed chronic diseases of Korean society. Finally, people have achieved constitutional amendment which includes the right to life and safety rights to prevent the second Sewol ferry sinking.

Ironically, a lack of republicanism in national pension has not been discussed as a political agenda. In other words, pension politics has never existed in the Republic of Korea. The reason is that when the national pension fund was introduced for the first time, policymakers designed a pension system based on populism. The reason why the system is defined as populist is because of its abnormalities between a premium rate and an income replacement rate. To put it concretely, while the former is too low, the latter is too high. It is a sort of privilege. Once established, the system has been fossilized by inertia, then rather reformed to exacerbate the poverty of the elderly. As a result, the sense, that the privileges from the current abnormal national pension system should be maintained, has been spread among people even though the issue of elderly poverty has been aggravating. Even now the politicians mislead the reform of the national pension system in a way that maintains privileges.

I find the reason, that the discussion of Korea's pension reform is held on the context of populism, from the absence of Republicanism and public sphere for this issue. Various normative theories and British case are also be examined.

Author

• Joon Young Yoon, Korea University, Department of Political Science & International Relations