국민연금법 개정방안에 대한 고찰

In 1995 the big frame of our social security system was established. The system of the Korean social security scheme usually includes the National Health Insurance, Unemployment Insurance, Industrial Accident Insurance, and the National Pension System. In this thesis I probed into the current discussions over the revision of the National Pension System. As is well known, the issue of the public pension system amendment is a hot potato in almost all the advanced countries, as the old ageing phenomenon becomes more rapidly aggravated in those countries. Korea is also a country, which experiences the problem of old ageing and low birth-rate almost as fast as its industrialization speed. In just several years after the full-fledgling of its public pension system into almost all the city residents, the country has been facing with the immergent task of revising its whole scheme. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the current system will have its first deficit in the year of 2036, while its final bankruptcy is expected to be in 2047 at the latest. In the meanwhile, the Korean Congress has recently passed the revision of the National Pension Act, which reduces the pension benefit rate from the current 60 percent of the average income to 40 percent. However, this revision is still said to be a transient cure for the suffering National Pension fund, which has extended its life by only thirteen more years with this revision. Our priority is to keep the public pension system as a mainstream social security device, while its opponents mainly composed of younger generations expressing their big reluctance to be dragged into it. If we think more deeply about the problem, it is basically related with the conflicting ideas of the final goals to secure the lives of the members of a society and to protect their properties. It is so evident that both ideas are too valuable to sacrifice one for the other. Therefore, we have to find a solution to harmonize and integrate the two ideas into the new public pension system we are going to make. In this regard, I tried to analyze the legal characteristic of our right to the pension benefit and diverse opinions of the scholars over how to adjust the benefit and contribution amount so that they can be sustained in the long term perspective. I agree with the many scholars who voice in the need of a paradigmatic reform instead of a mere parametric reform, which has its inherent limit as a short-term reform. In addition to that, however, it should be also noted that the Constitution Court of Korea has changed its position into acknowledging the property right of an individual to his or her public pension benefit. Even though our Constitution Court is not fully granting the proprietary characteristic to the expected benefit, as its interpretation being such that only the contribution made by the employee can be regarded as his or her property, we should also attend the German Constitution Court's full recognition of the contribution as a personal property, regardless of the contribution being made by the part of the employee or the employer. Anyway, the remodeling of the National Pension system is so imminently demanded and its restructuring seems to be inevitable. No matter whether we take the position of our Constitution Court or the German Constitution Court, the need to protect the individual proprietary right to the expected benefit should never be disregarded during the course of the revision of the National Pension system.