A person appears to be like at a zpravodaj board arrange at a job honest in Seoul Metropolis Corridor in central Seoul, March 6. The Nationwide Human Rights Fee of Korea on Monday advisable elevating the authorized retirement age to 65 from 60, saying that it is very important shield the financially weak older grownup inhabitants. Newsis
The Nationwide Human Rights Fee of Korea on Monday advisable elevating the authorized retirement age from 60 to 65, emphasizing the significance of defending the rising variety of financially weak older adults within the nation.
In a press release despatched to the chiefs of the Workplace for Authorities Coverage Coordination and the Ministry of Employment and Labor, Chairman Ahn Chang-ho and three commissioners urged the federal government to take steps to handle the hole between the authorized retirement age and the age at which people can entry their nationwide pension.
“The hole between the authorized retirement age of 60, and 65, the age at which individuals can begin receiving nationwide pensions, signifies that folks in Korea face an earnings cliff of a minimal of 5 years, which critically threatens their financial safety,” the fee stated.
The advice comes because the nation grapples with numerous points associated to its quickly graying inhabitants amid its persistently low birthrate. Based on information from Statistics Korea, folks aged 65 or larger account for 20.3 p.c of the inhabitants, with the determine projected to achieve 40 p.c by 2050.
With none decisive state motion, this might imply many extra economically struggling older folks, the fee stated.
“Korea’s relative poverty fee of older folks aged 66 or larger stands at 39.7 p.c, which is much larger than different member international locations of the OECD,” the fee stated. “Knowledge exhibits employment fee for older folks has steadily risen yearly to 37.3 p.c. Additionally, many retire a lot sooner than the authorized retirement age, at 49.4 on common.”
The relative poverty fee refers back to the ratio of individuals with an earnings beneath 50 p.c of the median earnings. The typical determine for OECD member states was 14.2 p.c in 2020.
Final 12 months, the federal government adopted an experimental coverage to lift the retirement age for its 2,300 cleansing and facility upkeep employees from 60 to 65.
The fee praised the pilot coverage but additionally acknowledged that implementing the identical coverage can be difficult for a lot of different positions, particularly within the non-public sector the place corporations have to decide on between maintaining the older staff and hiring younger ones.
“Subsequently, for the retirement age extension to achieve success, it’s essential to formulate insurance policies that may handle the wage adjustment of older staff, and this must be promoted in a means that expands the working lifetime of the older grownup inhabitants with out negatively affecting different age teams,” the fee stated. “As seen in Japan’s case, the federal government must give you methods to help corporations, such because the growth of direct monetary help for labor bills, to be able to steadiness employment and wage adjustment.”
Chatting with reporters later within the day, Labor Minister Kim Moon-soo stated elevating the retirement age would inevitably harm job prospects for younger folks amid the present financial downturn.
“If you consider who the weaker get together is between younger job seekers who’ve by no means had a job and employees who would quickly retire, I feel it’s the younger folks, and the federal government ought to focus extra on defending them,” he stated. “Elevating the retirement age will probably be troublesome within the close to future.”
Based on a survey, collectively performed final 12 months by 4 Korean pollsters, 86 p.c of the respondents stated they have been in favor of steadily elevating the retirement age to 65, whereas solely 11 p.c opposed the thought.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Well being and Welfare introduced final month that it was reviewing the coverage thought of elevating the minimal age for eligibility for older grownup welfare advantages — from 65 to 75 — amid rising issues concerning the soundness and sustainability of the welfare system.
