The Rules of the Game: The Politics of National Pensions in Korea

This article explores the conditions in which policy changes occur over time. It studies the institutional pathways taken by national pensions in Korea over an extended period by identifying the key moments which have pushed through their development: initiation (1973), implementation (1988) and reform (1998). Public pensions have developed over time in an incremental fashion, bringing an ever‐growing proportion of the population under their umbrella. What accounts for this development? A number of factors may be at work. The elderly population has rapidly increased; the traditional extended family has increasingly become a nuclear one, meaning that what used simply to be a family issue of protecting the elderly has become a social matter; urbanization and industrialization have resulted in an ever‐growing number of life‐time contingencies such as unexpected income losses. Convincing as these socio‐economic accounts may seem, however, they offer only a snapshot, underscoring the politics of national pensions which stretch over long periods. This article seeks to answer how and in whose interest national pensions come on to the political agenda; how they are framed and defined; and how political actors respond to pressures for national pension reform. In each of the three stages, it is suggested, somewhat different institutional rules have operated. Defining institutional rules as ‘the process of who gets represented in the decision‐making processes’, this article identifies the different institutional rules which have played a pivotal role in the social policy‐making processes.