Minister Jung Eun-kyeong of the Ministry of Health and Welfare said on the 19th that she plans to announce the basic pension overhaul plan "by late August or early September."
The Minister attended a full meeting of the Health and Welfare Committee at the National Assembly that day and said, "I think the basic pension has made a big contribution to improving the elderly poverty rate, but there is analysis that its contribution has recently been declining," and stated accordingly. The basic pension was introduced in 2014 and is paid to the bottom 70% of seniors by income standard. The amount each household receives differs, such as being reduced if both spouses receive the basic pension, but for a single-person household, the maximum of 349,700 won per month is paid.
The Minister said, "We will restructure the basic pension into a bottom-up, top-down model to provide more support to low-income seniors and build a more tightly knit income safety net." She added, "Along with the bottom-up, top-down overhaul of the basic pension, we are also reviewing improvements to the spousal reduction system and the system related to non-payment of occupational pensions." The Minister said, "To overhaul the basic pension, we need to amend the Basic Pension Act," adding, "We need to gather opinions in the National Assembly and undergo legal deliberation."
Earlier, on the report of second-half work held at the Blue House on the previous month, the Minister said she was drafting an overhaul plan in two directions: changing the (basic pension receipt) eligibility criteria to a relative assessment so it is not fixed at 70%, and switching to using the standard median income as the basis.