South Korea’s public pension system was introduced to address the adverse selection problem of private pensions and the moral hazard of public assistance, and aims to provide a secure retirement through income redistribution and social solidarity. In this process, balancing economic performance and social responsibility remains an important challenge.
The purpose of pension systems is to provide economic security by guaranteeing a certain income when people are old and unable to work. They serve as an important social safety net to reduce the economic uncertainty that individuals may face in old age and help them lead a stable life. In particular, pension systems are becoming increasingly important as we move towards an aging society. The need for a pension system is growing as the responsibility of providing for the elderly, which used to be the responsibility of the family, gradually shifts to the individual.
This can be accomplished through private pensions from insurance companies or public assistance funded by the state through taxes. Private pensions are a way for individuals to organize their own retirement and operate according to market principles. Public assistance, on the other hand, is provided by the state as a social safety net and serves to cover basic needs. However, these two systems alone are not enough to ensure the retirement of all citizens. Why does South Korea have a public pension system alongside these programs?
It’s because of the side effects of private pensions and public assistance. Private pensions create adverse selection. People who cannot expect a stable retirement are the ones who enroll, and those who can afford it are the ones who do not. This is a structural problem with private pension systems that causes the total amount of benefits to be paid out to become larger and larger compared to the total amount of premiums paid. This makes private pensions unsustainable for insurance companies unless they keep raising premiums. This situation exposes the imperfections of a market economy and can lead to greater social inequality.
On the other hand, public assistance can cause moral hazard. Public assistance is a system in which the state provides cash, goods, or free benefits to people who cannot afford to live at the social minimum. Because public assistance is free, it can create a tendency for people to spend all their income in their younger years and rely on public assistance in their older years. To counteract this negative effect, public pension systems collect insurance premiums by forcing earning citizens to enroll. The accumulated pension fund is then invested by the state and paid out as an annuity after the member retires. This is significant because it ensures that all citizens have a secure retirement through social solidarity rather than individual responsibility.
In South Korea, the public pension system is governed by a conflict between those who emphasize social solidarity and those who emphasize economic performance. Specifically, the former argue that the system should be used as a means of redistributing income across classes and generations. People with lower incomes who pay less in premiums should receive a similar pension to those who pay more. It can also be understood from this perspective that the premiums of the children’s generation cover the pensions of the parents’ generation. The former can be seen as a consideration for the less fortunate and an effort to realize social equality.
However, the latter criticizes that such income redistribution, which forces some members of society to make sacrifices, should only be allowed when it is possible to guarantee the real value of pensions by adjusting them for inflation. The greater the income disparity within society, the greater the burden of insurance premiums on the children’s generation, the stronger this criticism becomes. These criticisms emphasize that for pension systems to be sustainable in the long term, they need to be rationalized to reflect economic realities.
These two positions have also recently clashed over the investment direction of pension funds. The latter position views pension funds as trust funds entrusted by members to provide income security in retirement. The former view is that pension funds are investment funds created by the people as a whole for social development, which is linked to job creation and social and economic development. The argument for investing them in socioeconomic sectors linked to job creation is gaining momentum. This is being accomplished by revising the laws that have traditionally characterized pension funds as a kind of trust fund, in order to expand the group of earners who pay into them. It is also an argument for utilizing this huge amount of money directly.
In conclusion, South Korea’s public pension system has become more than just a guarantee of income in old age, but an important social device for finding a balance between social solidarity and economic performance. The future direction of the pension system will need to be more sophisticatedly designed based on these social and economic considerations.
