Over 40% of Korea's Population to Be Elderly in 2060

Around 44 percent of Korea's population will be over 65 years of age in 2060, yet one out of two senior citizens are ill prepared for retirement.

According to Statistics Korea on Monday, 15.7 percent of Korea's 51.7 million people are now elderly, and their proportion is expected to reach 20.3 percent in five years' time and to 43.9 percent by 2060, which means Korea will be a "super-aged" society.

The number of elderly citizens supported by every 100 working people between 15 to 64 will rise from 21.7 this year to 91.4 in 2060 or almost 1:1.

But many senior citizens are ill prepared for retirement. As of last year, only 48.6 percent were financially prepared or getting ready to stop working, up from 39 percent in 2009.

The most common preparation was putting money into the National Pension Service (31.1 percent), followed by bank savings (27.9 percent), real estate (14.6 percent), other public pension funds (13 percent), private pension funds (8.1 percent) and retirement severance pay (4.7 percent).

The average net assets of an elderly household stood at W368 million, up by W4.46 million on-year, but 77.2 percent of that was real estate (US$1=W1,173).