More than half of South Koreans aged 60 to 64 receive no pension of any kind, a government survey found. The non-receipt rate reaches 75.7% among those aged 60 to 62, who have not yet reached the normal age for the national old-age pension, laying bare an income gap between retirement and pension eligibility.
Of the 4.105 million people aged 60 to 64, 1.824 million received at least one of 11 types of pensions — including the National Pension, occupational pensions for civil servants and other special groups, retirement pensions and private pensions — according to the 2024 pension statistics released on the 25th by Statistics Korea. That put the coverage rate at just 44.4%. The remaining 2.281 million, or 55.6%, received no pension at all.
The cliff around the National Pension eligibility age showed up clearly in the age breakdown. Among the 2.351 million people aged 60 to 62, only 572,000, or 24.3%, received a pension. By contrast, coverage jumped to 71.4% among those aged 63 to 64, who have reached the normal age for the National Pension — a gap of 47.1 percentage points at the threshold of age 63. Even so, 502,000 people aged 63 to 64 still received no pension.
The effect of the higher eligibility age also appears over time. In 2023, when the normal age for the National Pension rose to 63 from 62, the population aged 60 to 64 grew 1.4%, but the number of pension recipients fell 9.4%. The coverage rate dropped to 42.7% in 2023 from 47.9% in 2022, a decline of 5.1 percentage points. It rebounded to 44.4% in 2024, but recipients were still 133,000 fewer than in 2022.
Not everyone without a pension lacks income. Among the non-recipients, 1.199 million held a job registered in administrative data such as the four major social insurance programs. In effect, they filled the gap by continuing to work without a pension.
The other 1.082 million received no pension and had no job registered in administrative data either — 26.4% of the entire population aged 60 to 64. The unregistered group includes not only the unemployed and the economically inactive but also workers outside the formal system, so they cannot be classified as having no income. Still, they are a group likely to have fallen outside both income sources — a stable job and a pension.
Under current law, employers must set the retirement age at 60 or older. The normal age for the National Pension, however, is 63 for those born between 1961 and 1964, 64 for those born between 1965 and 1968, and 65 for those born in 1969 or later. Assuming a retirement age of 60, the pension gap built into the system lengthens from the current three years to as many as five.
Among those aged 60 to 64 who did receive a pension, the monthly average was 1.051 million won, higher than the 737,000 won average for those aged 65 and over. But the median was 633,000 won, and 39.1% of recipients received less than 500,000 won a month. By contrast, 14.2% received 2 million won or more. The structure is one in which the majority have no pension at all, while a portion who spent years building up occupational, retirement and private pensions receive relatively large amounts.
"A pension is the result of 30 or 40 years of preparation in one's younger years showing up in old age," said Song Ju-hwa, head of the administrative statistics division at Statistics Korea. "The gaps between groups are hard to resolve in a short period."
