Exclusive or row houses neglected?... 80% of Housing Pensions Are Apartments

Archive photo / Photo by Mun Ho-nam munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] It has been revealed that 80% of the housing pension, aimed at supporting stable retirement income, is concentrated in apartments. Since half of all houses are detached houses, row houses, and multi-family houses, there is an urgent need for improvements to preserve the purpose of the system.

According to data received on the 4th from the Korea Housing Finance Corporation by Yoon Kwan-seok, chairman of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee and member of the Democratic Party of Korea, the number of housing pension subscriptions from January to August this year was 6,636, with an average monthly payment of 1,137,000 KRW.

By housing type, apartments accounted for 5,273 cases, or 79.5%. This was followed by detached houses with 552 cases, multi-family houses with 573 cases, row houses with 182 cases, senior welfare housing with 35 cases, and mixed-use housing with 21 cases.

In 2016, among 10,309 housing pension subscriptions, apartments accounted for 8,685 cases, or 84.2%. The figures were 83.7% in 2017, 82.4% in 2018, and 81.4% in 2019. The ratio of apartments to non-apartments has solidified at approximately 8 to 2.

According to Statistics Korea, last year the nationwide distribution of housing types was 50.1% apartments, 32.1% detached houses, 11.6% row and multi-family houses, and 6.2% others, making the ratio of apartments to non-apartments roughly 5 to 5.

Representative Yoon Kwan-seok pointed out, "The difference between the actual proportion of housing types and the proportion of housing pension subscribers is too large to be interpreted merely as a reflection of the characteristics of owners of each housing type."

He added, "We will conduct a more in-depth diagnosis of the causes of subscription disparities by housing type and examine with relevant ministries and institutions whether there is room for improvement so that the original purpose of the housing pension system, a retirement measure for ordinary citizens, can be applied evenly to homeowners of all housing types."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.