People walk down a street in Seoul’s financial district of Yeouido on Sept. 23, 2021. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 9 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean wage workers retire at an average of 49.3 years old, more than half of whom are forced to opt for early retirement, a report said Tuesday.
Mirae Asset Investment and Pension Center said that according to Statistics Korea reports, the average age of retirement among those between 55 and 64 years of age last year was 49.3 years, and the average length of service at the time of retirement was 12.8 years.
The average retirement age has remained below 50 for the last 10 years, falling short of the legal retirement age of 60.
Among all wage workers, only 9.6 percent had gone through regular retirement. Others were either fired or asked to resign (15.6 percent), or lost their jobs due to business struggles (16 percent) or business shutdowns (9.7 percent). In total, 41.3 percent were forced to retire early.
The plunging rate of regular retirement and a surge in early, involuntary retirement have increased the need to prepare for early retirement, the center explained.
The average age of reaching a lifecycle deficit, in which the amount of spending begins to exceed wages, has increased from 56 years in 2010 to 60 in 2019, indicating that those subject to early retirement have continued to work, pushing back the effective age of retirement.
The effective age of retirement, indicating that a person is effectively removed from the labor market, was 72.3 years in 2018, the oldest among all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
