South Korea is moving to bring 6.67 million people — including homemakers who lost earned income after marriage and were dropped from automatic National Pension enrollment — into the system as regional enrollees, giving them a path to build pensions of their own. The aim is to move away from the old model in which a couple prepared for retirement on one spouse's pension, and to rebuild the retirement income system so that each spouse can draw a pension.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Pension Service are pursuing a restructuring of enrollment rules to classify spouses without income as "payment-exempt" regional enrollees, the two said on the 22nd.
Under current rules, eligibility differs by marital status even among people with no income. An unmarried person without income is classified as payment-exempt, keeping enrollee status while pausing premium payments. Payment-exempt periods can be counted toward the contribution record through retroactive payments covering up to 119 months, and low earners also receive premium support.
By contrast, a married person without income whose spouse earns is classified as "excluded from application," falling outside automatic enrollment. Without a prior contribution record, such a person is shut out of both retroactive payments and premium support for low earners. In effect, homemakers who stopped earning upon marriage have been pushed outside the pension system.
"The current system was built in 1988, when the National Pension was introduced, on the assumption of households where only one spouse earned money," a ministry official said. "The structure that excludes people from automatic enrollment across the board simply because they are homemakers needs to be fixed quickly."
If a future legal revision folds non-earning spouses into the regional enrollee category, they would be able to pause premium payments while they have no income and later make retroactive payments for that period to fill out their contribution record. Once they begin earning, they would pay premiums under regional enrollee rules. A pension can be drawn for life from the eligibility age once the contribution record reaches at least 10 years, or 120 months.
The ministry and the pension service plan to pursue enrollment for non-earning spouses first, then review whether to extend coverage to groups such as young adults under 27 without income. Of a population of 29.4 million aged 18 to 59, 20.93 million are National Pension enrollees and 1.8 million belong to special occupational schemes for civil servants, military personnel and private school teachers, according to data the pension service submitted to Rep. Nam In-soon of the Democratic Party of Korea. The remaining 6.67 million, including non-earning spouses and young adults without income, are outside the mandatory enrollment requirement.
Behind the push to widen enrollment for non-earning spouses is the weaker retirement income of women compared with men. Women's average monthly old-age pension was 429,206 won, about half the 851,670 won received by men, according to the National Pension Service.
The average contribution period was also shorter for women, at 123 months against 152 months for men, a gap of 29 months. Among voluntary enrollees — those who sign up despite not being subject to mandatory enrollment — women numbered 268,113, about 4.1 times the figure for men. Women also outnumbered men by about 2.2 to 1 among those who continue contributing past age 60 to complete their contribution record or raise their pension payout. With the household-centered enrollment structure left in place for 38 years since the National Pension was introduced, homemakers have been paying premiums past age 60 to close the gaps in their own retirement income.
"One pension per person is the issue we are pushing hardest," Kim Sung-joo, chairman of the National Pension Service, said at a parliamentary audit on the 14th. "We can become a genuine retirement income security state only by bringing non-earning spouses inside the system."