ABSTRACT
The Korean public pension is a social insurance system in which the pension benefits are financed by means of contributions (premiums) imposed equally on the persons insured and employers. Of the amount needed to cover the selfemployed, one third is contributed by the state. The public pension scheme consists of two pillars. Pensions for civil servants (1960) constitute the public pension for particular occupational groups (e.g., government employees in 1960, to which were added military personnel in 1963 and private school teachers in 1974). National pensions cover the rest of the population (1988). First brought into law in 1973 yet implemented only from January 1988, national pensions began by covering those of working age of 18 to 60 in workplaces with over 10 employees. Those in workplaces with over 5 employees had been included by January 1992. In July 1995, those in rural areas became their beneficiaries. Since April 1999, it has been a compulsory legal requirement for those aged between 18 and 60 to participate in one of the public pension schemes. In 1999, national pensions covered over 70 percent of the economically active population, including the self-employed in urban areas, those in workplaces with fewer than 5 employees, temporary and daily workers and part-time employees. From July 2003 it became a compulsory requirement for workplaces with more than 1 employee to participate in national pensions, while those aged below 27 with no income have been excluded from the programme.
