[Editorial] Fixing pension crisis

South Korea’s national pension is on track to be depleted by 2055, unless drastic and painful reforms are taken by the government. The question is whether policymakers can pull off a consensus on this sensitive issue in time. The National Pension Service (NPS) announced temporary projections about the fund at a press conference Friday at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The fund is set to swing into deficit starting from 2041, and will be completely drained in 2055, the NPS said. The ne

Jan. 30, 2023

[Editorial] Price of populism

Soaring heating bills and high inflation are fanning worries over the cost of living. The retail price of city gas rose about 38 percent last year as a consequence of the international price of liquefied natural gas, mostly used for heating, surging 128 percent. The cold has been unusually severe this winter. The government has frozen gas rates for the first quarter but says that additional hikes are unavoidable after the second quarter. To make matters worse, Seoul is currently taking procedure

Jan. 27, 2023

[Editorial] Broadening market access

South Korean financial authorities have announced a set of changes aimed at attracting more foreign investors by removing outdated restrictions and making the local market more accessible. If successful, the country would be able to move closer to join the top grade of global market indices. Whether the new revisions will indeed draw more foreign investors, however, depends on a mix of other related reform measures on a broader scale. The Financial Services Commission said Tuesday it will revise

Jan. 26, 2023

[Editorial] Strengthen spy probe

Four former and current executive officials of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are under investigation by the National Intelligence Service on suspicion of spying for North Korea. The agency and the police searched the headquarters office of the nation’s major labor group last week. The search and seizure warrant issued by the court is said to have contained concrete grounds for suspicions that the service has secured for a long stretch of time. They are suspected of contacting a

Jan. 25, 2023

[Editorial] 3 years under COVID-19

The first COVID-19 case was confirmed in South Korea on Jan. 20, 2020. Since then, every aspect of Korean life has been drastically reshaped to grapple with the pandemic, and the public health authorities are still waging a tough fight to keep the virus under control. The unprecedented pandemic has left a dreadful impact, having infected over 670 million people worldwide so far, around 6.7 million of whom died from the virus, according to latest official data available. The actual fatalities, es

Jan. 20, 2023

[Editorial] Labor tyranny

Labor unions' tyranny at construction sites was shown in a recent survey. In a two-week poll of construction companies, conducted by the Construction Association of Korea, the Korea Housing Association and the Korea Specialty Contractors Association at the request of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, 843 construction companies reported that they suffered setbacks in construction projects due to high-handed action from labor unions. Considering that some companies may hav

Jan. 19, 2023

[Editorial] Education reform

Education is one of the three key areas that the Yoon Suk Yeol administration aims to reform along with labor regulations and pensions. As with other sectors, however, the government must overcome a slew of obstacles, especially opposition and skepticism from existing stakeholders. A case in point is the raging dispute over the government’s plan to establish new special graduate schools of education for those who want to become elementary and secondary school teachers. The envisioned gradu

Jan. 18, 2023

[Editorial] Suspected deals on trial

Prosecutors are said to have secured a statement by Nam Wook, a suspect standing trial in the Daejang-dong land development scandal, to the effect that Kim Man-bae, another key suspect related to the scandal, has once said he made the Supreme Court overturn appeals court rulings on two cases. The statement was made in October 2021. One case was an appeals court ruling that Lee Jae-myung, leader of the majority opposition Democratic Party of Korea, violated the election law when he was a candidat

Jan. 17, 2023

[Editorial] Rate hike conundrum

The Bank of Korea raised the benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 3.5 percent Friday, extending its tightening mode with a seventh straight rate increase dating to April last year, amid expectations the central bank might soften its hawkish stance sooner rather than later. The rate hike seems inevitable in consideration of stubbornly high inflation and other related market conditions. Since August 2021, the BOK has raised the benchmark rate by a combined 3 percentage points through 10 hikes to b

Jan. 16, 2023

[Editorial] Thorough probe needed

Kim Seong-tae, the fugitive former chairman of Ssangbangwool Group, was arrested in Thailand on Tuesday, about eight months after fleeing abroad to avoid investigations into allegations of corruption. He was reportedly involved in organized crime in North Jeolla Province. His past convictions include opening and running illegal gambling dens, selling illegal casino programs and unregistered money lending. He apparently turned himself into a legitimate businessman in 2010, when he took over the c

Jan. 13, 2023

[Editorial] Misguided ‘visible hand’

For South Korea’s commercial banks, things couldn’t have been better last year. As the Bank of Korea kept raising benchmark rates, higher interest rates led to bigger profits linked to loans to individual and corporate borrowers. More customers also rushed to set up savings accounts offering higher interest rates. Favorable market conditions based on the wider gap in deposit and lending rates resulted in outsized profits, a reason that commercial banks are celebrating themselves with

Jan. 12, 2023

[Editorial] Spy ring uncovered

The counterespionage authorities are said to be investigating an officer of a progressive party and two others on Jeju Island in relation to suspicions they have been spying for North Korea. It is the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's first known investigation of a spy ring acting for Pyongyang. The authorities are also said to have captured indications of similar underground organizations in three other cities -- Changwon and Jinju in South Gyeongsang Province and Jeonju in North Jeolla Provi

Jan. 11, 2023

[Editorial] Earnings shock

South Korea’s two flagship tech companies announced their operating earnings would drop at an alarming pace, shedding light on the worsening market conditions and greater economic risks this year. Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker, said Friday its fourth-quarter profit plummeted 69 percent from a year earlier, hurt by a fall in memory chip prices and sluggish demand for devices. Samsung’s October-December operating profit stood at 4.3 tri

Jan. 10, 2023

[Editorial] Reform the military

One of five North Korean unmanned aerial vehicles that infiltrated South Korean airspace on Dec. 26 was belatedly found to have briefly entered the no-fly zone around the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Jan. 5 that an object presumed to be a small enemy drone appears to have flown through a part of the "northern tip" of the 3.7-kilometer radius zone around the presidential office. The National Intelligence Service said that the drone in que

Jan. 9, 2023

[Editorial] Winter surge of COVID-19

South Korea is strengthening protective measures against the spread of COVID-19 for travelers from China, but stronger measures including a fresh drive to encourage vaccinations for the elderly are needed in order to stem the winter surge of infections linked to a new subvariant. The country added 64,106 new coronavirus cases Thursday, falling for the second consecutive day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). But the overall level of spread is still high and the

Jan. 6, 2023

[Editorial] Raise nuclear deterrence

US President Joe Biden said “no” when asked by a reporter at the White House on Tuesday if he was currently discussing joint nuclear exercises with South Korea. His reply briefly caused confusion as it could be interpreted as contradicting remarks by his South Korean counterpart. President Yoon Suk-yeol said in an interview with the Chosun Ilbo, published Monday, “The nuclear weapons belong to the United States, but planning, information sharing, exercises and training should b

Jan. 5, 2023

[Editorial] Push for 3 major reforms

In his New Year’s address, President Yoon Suk-yeol reaffirmed his commitment to pushing for labor, education and pension reforms -- three key sectors that have long defied structural reforms despite their critical roles for the future of South Korea. “The Republic of Korea’s future and our future generations’ fate depend upon three major reforms: labor, education and pension,” Yoon said. "These cannot be delayed any longer." Yoon’s priority among the

Jan. 4, 2023

[Editorial] Shadow over economy

The New Year began with gloomy economic news. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on Sunday that the country posted a trade deficit of $47.2 billion last year. It was an all-time high in annual terms. The country was in trade deficit for nine straight months. Export decreased for recent three months in a row. The government forecast export to decline 4.5 percent this year. This news on New Year's day reminds South Koreans of highly uncertain and severe economic conditions f

Jan. 3, 2023

[Editorial] Proactive steps needed

Concerns over the safety of soundproof tunnels are mounting after a fire in a highway tunnel in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, on Thursday left five dead and 41 injured. The blaze that engulfed and gutted the bulk of the 830-meter-long tunnel-shaped structure is reported to have started with a cargo truck, where a fire broke out for unknown reasons. Dozens of cars were trapped under the structure along the road as the fire spread to the soundproof walls and lasted two hours before firefighters put

Jan. 2, 2023

[Editorial] Free money

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration will look into nongovernmental organizations' alleged misuse of government subsidies and opaque accounting practices. Subsidies snowballed each year, but money was being wasted at some of them. The presidential office on Wednesday unveiled the results of a government survey of subsidies distributed to NGOs for the past seven years. Subsidies totaled 31.4 trillion won ($24.7 billion). The annual subsidy amount increased from 3.5 trillion won in 2016 to 5.4 tr

Dec. 30, 2022