Breaking Free
The National Pension Fund Investment Office will be separated from the National Pension Service to be turned into a public corporation. In this context, the Ministry of Health & Welfare and the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs will hold a discussion session on July 21 to exchange opinions on how to improve national pension management, the governance of the National Pension Service, and to announce the government’s plan for the office.
It is said that the plan, which has been drafted by the institute at the request of the ministry, is to turn the National Pension Fund Investment Office into a public corporation, turn the National Pension Fund Operation Committee into a permanent organization, and promote the National Pension Fund Deliberative Council.
The new public corporation is scheduled to be a fund management corporation belonging to the ministry. At present, the corporation is likely to be expressed as a highly independent public organization when it comes to the nature of the corporate entity, and the determination on its special corporation status is going to be made later.
According to the government’s plan, the National Pension Fund Operation Committee, which is the top decision-making mechanism relating to national pension funds, becomes permanent with its own secretariat, too. This is for in-depth discussions and the enhancement of expertise.
At first, the discussion session was planned to be held in April. However, it was postponed to the following month and then to July 21 due to the sensitivity of the issues covered by the plan. The ministry set out to prepare it to respond to the claim that the National Pension Service’s fund management has lacked professionalism and representativeness, even though the issue has a great influence on the national economy. The national pension fund is estimated to exceed 500 trillion won (US$434 billion) in amount this year and 1 quadrillion won (US$867 billion) in 2022.