'Reform plan would raise the bar for single-person households'
'Freeze equals a cut when inflation is factored in'
People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo criticized the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Friday for abruptly canceling a ministerial briefing on its basic pension reform plan just one hour before it was scheduled to begin, questioning whether the government had ever truly intended to inform the public of the reported measures.
In a Facebook post that day, Ahn said the reform plan's biggest problem was its proposal to replace the current eligibility threshold — the bottom 70 percent of all elderly by income — with 80 percent of the median income standard.
"Under the current standard, a single-person household must earn no more than 2.47 million won ($1,780) per month to qualify for the basic pension," Ahn said. "If the Lee Jae Myung government's reform plan is adopted, that threshold drops to 2.05 million won per month, significantly raising the bar for eligibility."
Ahn said the consequences would be severe for some current recipients. "A person in their 60s with a recognized monthly income of 2.1 million won who now receives 350,000 won in basic pension would receive nothing if the Lee Jae Myung government's reform plan passes — a tragedy," he said.
He characterized the plan as amounting in effect to a cut. "It does not even pay the pension in full to those who receive it," Ahn said. "The bottom 30 percent would see their payments raised to 400,000 won, and those in the 31st to 45th percentile to 367,000 won — but for everyone above that, the amount is frozen. When inflation is factored in, a freeze is in effect a cut."
He went on to say the plan amounted to the Lee Jae Myung government "sentencing the generation in their 50s and 60s — who worked diligently their whole lives and paid their taxes honestly — as unworthy of even 350,000 won in basic pension." He called the proposal "an act of violence against common sense, stripping the basic pension from people in their 50s and 60s," and demanded it "be torn up and scrapped immediately."
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