Policy Evaluation: President Yoon’s Elderly Workspace Policy

In 2022, the Yoon ministry announced that more than 60000 “public” workplaces for the elderly will become terminated. This policy is a result of President Yoon’s new public policy approach, where he aims to “increase the societal participation of the elderly” by increasing the number of private jobs for elderly workers. While in order to enact this policy, the government increased the budget for private job sectors for elderlies. However, this merely results in a total decrease of more than 20000 jobs for elderly workers.

As a country with the highest OECD elderly poverty rate, most elderly workers in South Korea are in states of mild to severe poverty, where 73.9% of such elderly workers sustain their living with the income from their jobs.

While it is understandable that the “public” workspace is a target of reform, as such workspaces for elderlies have often been criticized for being low quality, unsafe work environments, such a rapid decrease of workspaces must accompany pension/income provision policies inorder to sustain the lives of the elderly population.