President Lee Jae Myung floated the idea of restructuring South Korea’s basic pension system to provide greater support to low-income seniors and address poverty among the aging.
"The biggest cause of elderly suicide is poverty in our country, where both the overall suicide rate and the elderly suicide rate are among the highest in the world," Lee wrote on his official X account on Monday. "If we want to reduce elderly poverty that even drives people to suicide, we need to revise the basic pension system."
Lee pointed to a structural flaw in the current system. Eligible seniors who are 65 or older and in the bottom 70 percent of the income distribution receive the same monthly basic pension of about 300,000 won ($200), despite differences in income.
"An elderly person earning several million won a month receives the same basic pension as someone with zero income," Lee said.
Lee underscored that "Perhaps it is time to pay poorer seniors a little more generously."
"We could leave current payments as they are and only apply the principle of 'more support at the bottom, less at the top' to future increases. What do you think?” Lee asked the public on X.
Lee also commented on the article he shared in the X post, which reported that the Health and Welfare Ministry plans to gradually reduce the rate at which basic pension benefits are cut for married senior couples beginning in 2027, starting with lower-income households.
The government plans to first ease the couple reduction rule, which cuts each spouse’s basic pension by 20 percent when both members of a married couple receive the benefit, prioritizing lower-income seniors.
“Growing old together as a married couple should not be something that puts people at a disadvantage,” Lee wrote on X. “I hear that there are even cases of sham divorces to avoid reductions in the basic pension. Since the reduced payments stem from fiscal constraints, the system should be corrected as much as possible.”
Lee had raised similar concerns earlier this year. During a Cabinet meeting in January, he questioned whether the current system was effective in alleviating elderly poverty and also raised concerns about its fiscal sustainability.
Lee’s latest remarks are in line with his continued use of social media as a platform to directly address major policy issues, including real estate policy, prosecution reform and regional balanced development.
dagyumji@heraldcorp.com
