Last week, we were given a rare glimpse of military salaries. It was interesting to know that our top men and women in uniform receive fairly decent paychecks, if not as fat as those of people in the corporate and financial sectors.
The 2014 Defense Statistics Annual Report, which made the first-ever public disclosure of details of service members’ salaries, showed that the annual salary of a four-star general averaged 128.4 million won ($118,000) and a lieutenant general receives 121.7 million won.
A colonel who has served for 29 years gets 98 million won, a lieutenant colonel with 24 years of service 86 million won and a major with 16 years of service takes home 66 million won.
Going further down the ranks, a noncommissioned officer with 27 years of service receives 70 million won and one with 19 years of service pockets 55 million won.
Compared with other wage earners, these are not so bad, although the greater compensation we could give them for protecting this country ― sometimes risking their lives ― the better.
But as it comes from taxpayers’ money, the compensation should fall within reasonable limits, and the annual report shows that unlike the salaries of active service members, their post-retirement pension benefits are excessively generous.
The report showed that our concerns about the deficit-ridden pension schemes for the military were not unfounded. For instance, a colonel who retired after 30 years of service receives 3.5 million won each month and a retired lieutenant colonel who served 28 years receives 3.11 million won. In all, about 36 percent of the 82,000 military pensioners receive no less than 3 million won each month.
This is as excessively generous as the pension plans for government workers, for which the government has to spend huge sums of money year after year to make up for the snowballing deficit.
The cause of the deficit is simple: The pensioners receive much more than they contribute. In the case of the military pension plans, pensioners contribute only 16.5 percent of the funds, with the rest coming from government subsidies, i.e., taxpayer money.
In 2013, the government paid 2.3 trillion won to make up for the deficit in the military pensions and 2 trillion won for the government workers’ pensions, whose recipients number 82,000 and 260,000, respectively. This means each retired soldier is imposing more than three times as much burden on government finances as a retired civil servant.
The pension plans for teachers and professors at private schools and universities have similar problems. About 45 percent of its 20,000 pensioners receive at least 3 million won monthly, and the deficit is to reach 5.4 trillion won in 2033 unless an action is taken.
The government and the National Assembly plan to complete a pay-more, receive-less reform of the pension plans for government workers by April. There are ample reasons to reform the other pension schemes, too, as soon as possible.
