About NPReform
NPReform is a project team organized by students in Korea who share a hope for national pension reform. The name combines the first letters of “National Pension” with “reform.” Since it is young students who will ultimately bear the economic burden of the National Pension’s unsustainable structure, our founding purpose is to give students a voice in the political sphere.
We imagine a country where students — many of whom cannot yet vote, or are still too young to take an interest in politics — will not later be crushed under the weight of pension obligations. A country where the younger generation can stay vital even in an era of historically low birthrates. That is the country we dream of.
We hope for a new pension reform that breaks away from the current, unsustainable structure. But because radical reform lacks the political momentum to succeed, we work on gradual reform proposals that the existing political system can realistically accept. We envision a future in which students help improve Korea’s populist political culture today, and grow into a generation that understands the realities of politics rather than settling for simple, radical ideology.
Dreaming of a Sustainable Pension
Because a pension system is a hundred-year plan for guaranteeing citizens’ old age, its stability and sustainability matter more than any short-term gain. A state that cannot guarantee even a minimum standard of living in old age loses the trust of its people — and keeping that trust requires using limited resources efficiently.
We are doing everything we can to help today’s National Pension return to its essential purpose and regain that trust. So that the pension no longer remains a ticking time bomb in the Korean economy, we hope to spark — however modestly — the beginning of change.
Our Strength
The crisis facing the National Pension is not, in truth, a burden for today’s older generation to carry — it is a problem our generation, the one that will soon stand at the center of society, will have to shoulder in full. That is precisely why we believe students — however inexperienced, however much we are still learning — are the ones who must stand most urgently in front of this problem. We came together not only with students studying in Korea but with students studying abroad, so we could share how the National Pension looks from each of our different vantage points. And we want to keep reminding the mainstream generation — who will one day feel the full weight of this issue themselves — to keep this problem in view, and to always keep a door open for us to think it through together. That, more than anything else, is the strength we can confidently claim as our own.
Beginnings and Future
NPReform began with a small proposal from a handful of students. That proposal passed from friend to friend, from student to student, and the team naturally grew from there. Because the National Pension is, in the end, a system that must be rational enough to win public understanding, our goal was always to bring together as many people as possible. We believed that the more different perspectives came into contact, the more views on the National Pension would diversify — and the more room there would be for better ideas to emerge. In the coming years, we will become university students, and later, after graduation, young professionals who must stand on our own. Even through all of that change, NPReform’s capacity to keep renewing itself is something we take real pride in.
Team
The more than thirty high school and university students who make up NPReform are spread across Korea and several other countries, each continuing their own school life. Having grown up in different backgrounds and environments both at home and abroad, each of us has been able to give this issue our own share of time and attention — and bring fresh, varied ideas into the team as a result. We believe that this ability to bring together members from such different backgrounds toward a single direction is the greatest strength behind NPReform today.