{"id":72807,"date":"2025-07-09T10:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T01:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/09\/south-korea-peak-wage-system-raise-retirement-age-elderly-workers-poverty"},"modified":"2025-07-09T10:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T01:08:09","slug":"punishing-workers-for-getting-old-how-south-koreas-wage-system-impoverishes-the-elderly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72807","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Punishing workers for getting old\u2019: how South Korea\u2019s wage system impoverishes the elderly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As nation moves to raise retirement age, new report warns the real problem isn\u2019t when people retire, but how<\/p>\n<p>Insurance worker G Young Soo started working at his company at 23, and spent more than three decades climbing the ranks to become a branch director. Now approaching his 60th birthday, Young Soo\u2019s employer has systematically stripped away his salary.<\/p>\n<p>As part of South Korea\u2019s \u201cpeak wage\u201d system, Young Soo\u2019s wages were cut by 20% when he turned 56, and by a further 10% each year after that. By the time he is forced to retire next year, he will earn just 52% of what he made at 55, despite the same workload and hours.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/09\/south-korea-peak-wage-system-raise-retirement-age-elderly-workers-poverty\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As nation moves to raise retirement age, new report warns the real problem isn\u2019t when people retire, but howInsurance worker G Young Soo started working at his company at 23, and spent more than three decades climbing the ranks to become a branch direc&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2474,41,3359,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ageing","category-asia-pacific","category-employment-law","category-south-korea"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72808,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72807\/revisions\/72808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}