President Lee calls foreigners with short stays qualifying for back-payment pension 'contradictory'

President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday that it is "contradictory" for foreigners who have stayed in South Korea only briefly to qualify for retroactive national pension contributions, and called for eligibility requirements to be urgently tightened based on actual periods of domestic residence.

Cheong Wa Dae Chief Spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said in a written briefing on the 37th Cabinet meeting that, in a closed session, Lee received a report from the Ministry of Health and Welfare on the current status of retroactive pension contributions by foreigners and proposed improvements. Lee asked how many foreigners had made such contributions and said it was "contradictory" for foreigners who had stayed in the country only briefly to hold eligibility for retroactive contributions, Kang said.

Lee then asked the minister of health and welfare to view the issue from the public's perspective and consider whether eligibility requirements should be urgently tightened by taking into account factors such as the actual length of domestic residence.

The remarks follow reports of cases in which foreigners enrolled in the national pension system for as little as one month while working in South Korea, paid contributions covering past periods in a lump sum, and then received monthly old-age pension payments for life.

The retroactive contribution system allows people to pay pension premiums after the fact for periods when they were exempt from payments due to unemployment or business closure, or for gaps in enrollment history caused by marriage or childbirth.

The issue is that foreign enrollees are also eligible to apply for retroactive contributions, and those who were registered as foreign nationals during the applicable past period can apply without restriction for up to 10 years' worth of contributions. Critics have argued that allowing foreigners to make retroactive contributions runs counter to the original intent of the system, which was designed to protect the pension rights of career-interrupted homemakers and low-income workers.