[Choice Times=Rep. Na Kyung-won, People Power Party] 

The National Pension Service has raised its target allocation for domestic equities from 14.4% to 14.9%—an increase of 0.5 percentage points. This move involves selling overseas stocks, releasing dollars into the market, and using the proceeds to buy domestic shares, aiming for short-term effects such as “defending the exchange rate” and “propping up stock prices.”

A change of 0.5 percentage pointsis by no means trivial. It redirects a flow of funds amounting to roughly 10 trillion won.

In a properly functioning fund management committee, even a 0.1 percentage-pointadjustment would require extensive simulations over horizons of several years or even decades—examining long-term returns and volatility in both domestic and overseas markets, macroeconomic variables such as exchange rates, inflation, and growth, intergenerational equity, and the impact on the pension fund’s depletion timeline, including worst-case scenarios. This is the basic standard for advanced pension funds, because any damage is ultimately borne by the public and future generations.

Yet it has been reported that the meeting minutes—normally disclosed after one year—have now been classified as non-public until 2030, four years later.

The public has no way of knowing how decisions were made regarding the management of 1,500 trillion wonin retirement savings, or what discussions actually took place.

Which world-class pension fund revises its asset allocation at the President’s word and then seals the meeting minutes?

The calculation is obvious: use the public’s money to defend the exchange rate and support the stock market only until the end of the Lee Jae-myung administration, and then open the records after the term is over—when everyone responsible has already disappeared.

If these decisions were truly made for the public good and can withstand scrutiny, there is no reason they cannot be disclosed immediately.

The decision to keep the minutes sealed for four years must be withdrawn at once, and the records must be released transparently. The independence of pension fund management must also be guaranteed.

National retirement savings must not be used as a policy tool for exchange-rate defense or stock-market stimulus. How can the consequences of such actions possibly be borne?

#NationalPension #Transparency #PublicFunds