July 2025
14Jul

South Korea Boomers Having Their Wages Cut for Continuing to Work

South Korea's older workers are facing steep wage cuts and insecure work conditions simply for staying on the job past a certain age—a reality drawing criticism from rights groups. Why It Matters South Korea has one of the highest rates of elderly poverty in the developed world. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), 38 percent of people over 65 live in relative poverty. The nation's "peak wage" system and mandatory retirement policies are pushing many older workers into lower-paid, more precarious jobs, even as...

July 14, 2025
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11Jul

National Pension Fund and Stock Liquidity: Evidence from Korea

By Eunyoung Cho & Cheol-Won Yang We investigate the impact of the national pension’s trading on individual stock liquidity. While prior research has primarily focused on the effects of national pension funds on market performance or volatility, this paper shifts attention to liquidity, a relatively underexplored dimension of market quality. Utilizing detailed transaction-level data from the National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea between 2010 and 2019, we assess the relationship between NPS trading activity and stock liquidity by employing both...

July 11, 2025
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10Jul

South Korea. New Proposal Seeks to Extend Employer Pension Contributions to Gig Workers

South Korea is weighing a significant pension reform that could bring platform workers — such as food delivery riders and chauffeur-for-hire drivers — under the same pension contribution scheme as regular employees, with their platforms potentially covering half of their premiums. A new report released Tuesday by the National Pension Research Institute calls for extending employer-like responsibilities to digital platforms, arguing that most platform workers operate under economically dependent conditions despite being legally classified as independent contractors. Based on a survey...

July 10, 2025
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June 2025
24Jun

South Korea plans end to lump-sum retirement payouts for workers

The South Korean government is pushing forward with a major overhaul of how workers receive retirement benefits, aiming to replace the longstanding lump-sum severance system with mandatory pension-style disbursements across all workplaces. The Ministry of Employment and Labor has proposed a five-phase plan that would require all employers—beginning with large corporations and eventually extending to the smallest businesses—to transition to the retirement pension system. Once fully implemented, workers would no longer be able to receive their retirement pay as a...

June 24, 2025
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17Jun

South Korea: Insurers widen voluntary retirement schemes amid digital shift and M&A activity

The insurance industry is likely to see a rise in voluntary retirements in the latter half of this year, driven by ongoing digital transformation and a wave of mergers and acquisitions, according to industry sources on Monday, reported The Korea Times. As companies restructure their workforces during integration processes, the focus is shifting toward incentivised voluntary departures rather than forced layoffs. Hanwha General Insurance, currently preparing to complete its merger with Carrot General Insurance by September, is expected to follow this...

June 17, 2025
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May 2025
28May

Has baby bust bottomed out? S. Korea sees 7% rebound in births in Q1

For the first time in years, South Korea is seeing signs of a turnaround in its record-low birth rate. According to new data released by Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the number of babies born in the first quarter of 2025 rose by 7.3 percent compared to the same period last year. That makes it the highest first-quarter increase recorded since the agency began tracking the figure in 1981. From January to March, 65,022 babies were born, up from 60,571 a year...

May 28, 2025
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27May

South Korean insurers bag $10b in profits for 2024

The increase was mainly driven by higher investment income across life and non-life. The preliminary net income of 22 life insurance and 32 non-life insurance companies in South Korea accumulated $10.32b (KRW14.14t) for 2024, up 4.6% year-on-year (YoY), data from the Financial Supervisory Service showed. The increase was mainly driven by higher investment income across both life and non-life segments. Life insurance companies reported a net income of $4.1163b (KRW5.6374t), up 7.1% YoY. Despite a $581.4m (KRW796.4b) decline in insurance income due...

May 27, 2025
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20May

In Rapidly Aging South Korea, the Economy Is Slow in Creating “Age-Friendly” Jobs

Demographic shifts worldwide have increased the number of older workers, and many economies are facing a critical question: Are their labor markets ready to support older workers? Researchers have found that, in the United States, the surge of older workers has gone hand–in-hand with an increase in the number of “age-friendly jobs” – roles with working conditions more suitable for aging employees, such as placing fewer physical demands or offering greater scheduling flexibility. Yet it remains unclear whether comparable trends...

May 20, 2025
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19May

South Korea. Targeting young voters, pension reform emerges as major policy issue

This year, Korea implemented its first structural pension reform in 18 years. Yet, frustration persists among younger generations, as they are expected to pay more but receive less compared to older generations. With a clear aim of appealing to these younger voters, presidential candidates are unveiling a range of additional reform proposals. The most radical proposal comes from the minor conservative Reform Party. Its candidate, Lee Jun-seok — the youngest among the presidential hopefuls — has unveiled a plan to establish...

May 19, 2025
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April 2025
08Apr

South Korea’s National Pension Service Eyes Blockchain for $890B Fund’s Transactions

South Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS), which manages 1,224 trillion won ($836 billion) in assets, plans to look at how a blockchain could be used in its fund transaction systems. The organization is weighing a shift to blockchain technology to boost transparency and security in managing its deposits, withdrawals and investments, according to Seoul Economic Daily, which cited industry sources. The NPS plans to begin a preliminary disclosure process, inviting blockchain experts and companies to weigh in before formally launching the initiative, the news...

April 8, 2025
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