Court: Loss of Nationality Automatically Revokes Voluntary National Pension Eligibility

If a person loses South Korean nationality, their eligibility for voluntary subscription to the National Pension is automatically revoked, and notification from the National Pension Service is merely an informational notice, not a separate administrative disposition, according to a court ruling.

According to the legal community on July 28, the 13th Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court (Presiding Judge Jin Hyunseop) dismissed a lawsuit filed by Mr. A against the National Pension Service, seeking to cancel the revocation of voluntary subscriber status and the suspension of pension payments.

Mr. A had previously acquired and then lost the statuses of workplace subscriber, regional subscriber, and voluntary subscriber to the National Pension in succession. In February 2024, the Ministry of Justice notified Mr. A that his nationality had been retroactively lost as of March 16, 2005, and Mr. A was registered as a foreign national as of February 15 of the same year. In March 2024, the National Pension Service notified Mr. A that his voluntary subscriber status, acquired on September 4, 2009, was retroactively lost due to the loss of nationality, and that the date of loss of his regional subscriber status, originally April 1, 1999, was changed from November 20, 2008, to March 17, 2005, the day after the loss of nationality. Mr. A objected to this, but the National Pension Service only restored his regional subscriber status for the period from March 17, 2005, to November 19, 2008, and maintained that his voluntary subscriber status was lost. Mr. A then filed a lawsuit.

The court dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the notification from the National Pension Service was not an administrative disposition. The court explained, "If a reason specified in Article 12, Paragraph 3 of the National Pension Act arises for a voluntary subscriber, the effect of loss of eligibility occurs automatically on the day the reason arises or the following day, without the need for a separate disposition," and "The notification from the National Pension Service is merely an act of confirming whether and when there has been a change in subscriber status, and cannot be seen as directly causing a change in rights or obligations."

The court also stated, "Even if it were considered a disposition, the right to receive an old-age pension for those with less than ten years of subscription is not recognized as a property right in the first place, so there is no infringement of property rights." Regarding Mr. A's claim that he was told by a National Pension Service official that there was 'no problem,' the court found, "There is no evidence to support this, and the statement in question pertained to 'United States citizens,' not to 'persons who have lost nationality,' so it does not constitute a violation of the principle of protection of trust."