How Marital Status Shapes Pension Access and Retirement Security in Korea

What changed on October 22, 2026

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS) presented a plan to overhaul enrollment rules to the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee during its annual audit, Korea Herald and Seoul Economic Daily (Sedaily) reported. NPS chairman and CEO Kim Sung-joo first outlined the plan on October 14, 2026, and the formal report followed on October 22. The stated goal is to move the pension system away from the 1988 'one pension per household' design and toward a 'one pension per person' model, according to Sedaily and Edaily.

The marriage penalty in the current system

Under the National Pension Act as it currently stands, an unmarried person with no income can remain a 'payment-exempt' regional subscriber: they keep their place in the system, retain eligibility for disability and survivor benefits, and can later make retroactive contributions for up to 119 months to reach the 120-month (10-year) minimum required for an old-age pension, Sedaily and the Korea Herald reported. A person with no income who is married to an income-earning spouse, however, is classified as 'excluded' and removed from the system altogether, with no access to the same back-payment or subsidy options, according to Sedaily and Edaily. The NPS says this gap traces back to the system's 1988 design, which assumed a single-earner household.

Edaily reported that a similar fix was proposed in 2013 to address what it also described as a structural inequity for non-income earners, but the plan was dropped amid concern that it would raise the premium burden on households.

How many people are affected

The NPS estimates that 6.67 million people are currently excluded from mandatory coverage nationwide, a group that includes non-earning spouses and young adults aged 18 to 26 without income, according to the Korea Herald, Sedaily and Edaily. Edaily's audit figures put the number of excluded people aged 27 to 59 as of June 2026 at 3.86 million, of whom 3.54 million (91.6%) have some prior contribution history and 2.16 million had already contributed for four years or more.

A wider gender pension gap

Separately from the enrollment-rule change, NPS data for the end of 2025, cited by Sedaily, show women's average monthly pension at 429,206 won against 851,670 won for men. The average contribution period was 123 months for women versus 152 months for men. About 1.672 million women received less than 400,000 won a month, roughly 600,000 more than the number of men in that bracket, Sedaily reported. Women also accounted for 268,113 voluntary subscribers, about four times the number of men, according to the English-language Sedaily report.

A Human Rights Watch report published in September 2026 found that women received on average 53% of men's monthly National Old Age Pension, describing this as a 47-percentage-point gap. The report said women made up 38% of National Old Age Pension recipients in 2023 but 90% of Survivor Pension recipients, a benefit that pays 45% less. By August 2025, HRW found, 95% of women receiving a pension got less than 800,000 won ($558) a month, while the national minimum wage stood at 2.1 million won; the average full pension of 1.12 million won amounted to 53% of the minimum wage.

HRW also documented a case in which a woman's annual income fell from 55 million won to 15.6 million won, a 72% drop, after South Korea's mandatory retirement age of 60 pushed her out of her job and into part-time care work. The report put the relative poverty rate among women aged 66 and older at 45%, compared with 33% for men in the same age group.

What the reform would do

Under the NPS proposal, non-earning spouses and youth aged 18 to 26 without income would be reclassified as 'regional subscribers exempt from payment' rather than being excluded outright, Sedaily and the Korea Herald reported. This would let them retain disability and survivor benefit eligibility and later pay up to 119 months of back contributions to reach the 120-month minimum for an old-age pension.

Separate from the enrollment-status change, the Korea Herald and English-language Sedaily reported that starting January 1, 2027, the NPS plans a new subsidy covering the first month's premium (41,000 won, about $31) for people newly turning 18 with no prior contribution history, alongside a proposal to raise the monthly income threshold for low-income premium subsidies for regional subscribers from 800,000 won to 1,000,000 won.