In an era when owning a home in Seoul has become a dream for young people, the generation with the thickest asset cushion is stepping onto the threshold of elderly welfare. Those born in the 1960s — the so-called 386 generation — begin turning 65 this year. A senior fiscal policy official I recently met described the shift this way: "The richest elderly generation in history is coming." As the beneficiaries of industrialization, stable employment, and soaring property prices enter the basic pension age bracket, intergenerational imbalance is emerging as a full-blown issue.
The life trajectory of the 386 generation is intertwined with Korea's high-growth era. When they entered society in the late 1980s and 1990s, the economy was growing at around 10 percent annually. A college degree often led to stable employment, and real estate offered significant opportunities to build wealth. Statistics showing that a substantial portion of Korea's household assets is concentrated among those in their 50s and 60s reveal that this cohort is entering old age under conditions markedly different from those of previous elderly generations.
Of course, their lives have not been without hardship. They shouldered the dual burden of supporting parents and educating children, and weathered the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis firsthand. They worked relentlessly and contributed to elevating Korea to the ranks of advanced economies. Their efforts and achievements cannot be dismissed lightly. Yet there is also a fact that must be soberly acknowledged: even amid hardship, they had the generational opportunity to accumulate wealth.
The problem is that the reality facing the next generation is entirely different. The era of compressed growth is over, and potential growth has declined. Stable jobs have dwindled, and the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is raising the barrier to entry into society ever higher for young people. With median home prices in Seoul reaching 1.2 billion won, owning a home has effectively become a dream. This is a generation for whom marriage, childbirth, homeownership, and retirement planning have all receded at once.
Yet our basic pension system still operates on the premise of the impoverished elderly of the past. The current method of providing benefits to the "bottom 70 percent by income" raises fundamental questions about intergenerational justice. Does paying cash funded by the taxes of younger generations — even to retirees holding substantial real estate — truly align with the system's original purpose of poverty relief? President Lee Jae-myung's raising of reform discussions earlier this year likely reflects a judgment that this issue can no longer be ignored.
But acknowledging the need for reform and actually implementing it are entirely different matters. The basic pension is a cash benefit the elderly feel directly each month. At the same time, the elderly are a voter group with high turnout. It is inevitably the agenda item politicians approach most cautiously ahead of elections. The fact that discussions on basic pension reform have quietly disappeared from the National Assembly ahead of local elections is likely not unrelated to this political burden.
Even so, reform can no longer be postponed. The basic pension must now shift to "precise targeting." Rather than relying solely on the criteria of age and the bottom 70 percent by income, the system must rigorously reflect the actual value of real estate assets. For seniors holding high-priced homes in the capital region, pathways for asset liquidation such as reverse mortgages should be broadened, while they should be boldly excluded from basic pension eligibility — a sophisticated design is needed. The resources saved this way should flow more generously to the genuinely impoverished elderly. That means the principle of "more for the poor, less for the rich" must be clearly established. If we do not act now, the fiscal burden will grow heavier and the cost of reform will snowball.
In this process, the role of the 386 generation is also essential. Those who led democratization, drove national growth, and displayed a fiercer sense of justice than anyone must now demonstrate solidarity for the sake of intergenerational coexistence. When the retired generation with the means to do so embraces reform with a broader perspective, and when politicians, on the basis of that consent, design more generous support for the impoverished elderly, the basic pension can become a device for generational solidarity rather than a spark for generational conflict. That is the path for the 386 generation to preserve, together with the next generation, the remarkable achievements it has built.
