The 'excellent researcher' system will be improved to increase the practical beneficiaries, allowing researchers at government-funded research institutes with outstanding research achievements to extend their retirement age from 61 to 65. Excellent researchers can be selected within 10% of the government-funded research institute's quota, but until now, there has been a problem where excellent researchers benefiting from actual retirement age extensions have been reduced because researchers aged 58 to 60 with years remaining until retirement were also selected as excellent researchers.
According to the science and technology sector on the 24th, the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST) have announced an administrative notice for a draft regulation establishing the retirement age criteria for excellent researchers as '62 years or older.'
Even if selected as an excellent researcher before the retirement age, the actual inclusion in the quota will be unified at 62 years to prevent researchers who have not reached retirement from occupying the quota for excellent researchers. The Ministry of Science and ICT and NST expect more researchers will benefit from the retirement age extension.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST) introduced a system in 2012 to select researchers with excellent performance in papers, patents, and technology fees as excellent researchers and expand the retirement age from 61 to 65. They allowed each institution to select excellent researchers within 10% of their research staff quota.
However, the timing of selecting excellent researchers varied among research institutes. Some selected excellent researchers just before the retirement age of 61, while others selected at 58. The problem was that once selected as excellent researchers, those still having a few years until retirement were included in the quota according to the regulation of 'within 10% of the quota.' An NST official noted, 'The excellent researcher system effectively extends the retirement age of government-funded research institutes, but it is problematic for researchers with several years remaining until retirement to occupy the quota for excellent researchers.'
The Ministry of Science and ICT and NST clarified in Article 17, Paragraph 3 of the operational regulation for government-funded research institutes that 'the number of excellent researchers aged 62 or older should be within 10% of the research staff quota of each research institution.' This set the criteria for excellent researchers as '62 years or older.' Each institution can freely select excellent researchers, but the point of inclusion in the 'within 10% of the quota' will be unified at 62 years.
Once the new regulation is implemented, it is expected that the number of excellent researchers benefiting from the retirement age extension will increase without extending the quotas. The Ministry of Science and ICT and NST anticipate that institutions will be able to select an additional 2 to 3 excellent researchers each year.
NST is also considering a long-term plan to raise the retirement age for researchers at government-funded research institutes to 65. Originally, the retirement age for government-funded research institute researchers was 65, but it was lowered to 61 in 1998 following the economic crisis during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis. Kim Young-shik, the chairman of NST, said, 'We plan to review the restoration of retirement age in an atmosphere where social consensus on retirement age is achieved in the long term.'