Among basic pension recipients, poor seniors account for only 35%

The government has unveiled a reform plan for the Basic Pension, but concerns have been raised that the current system, which provides uniform payments to 70% of seniors aged 65 and older, is not sufficiently targeted toward support for lowincome groups. According to a study by Kim Mansu, Associate Research Fellow at the National Pension Research Institute, among the 6,465 people who received the Basic Pension in the 2020 Survey on the Elderly, 64.3% were nonpoor seniors with incomes above the poverty line, while only 35.7% were poor seniors with incomes below 50% of the median income. In addition, the average net assets of the top 10% of recipients were 556.29 million won, far higher than the 2.32 million won of the bottom 10%. The OECD pointed out that Korea's Basic Pension is a system that broadly distributes limited resources, and said that support needs to be concentrated on seniors who need it more. The Korean Society of Public Finance forecast that if the current system is maintained, the related budget in 2035 could increase significantly compared to this year.