Why did Korea's national pension fund seal the minutes until 2030?

Korean stocks now make up 29.4% of the money the National Pension Service manages. That was 543.6 trillion won at the end of May. The plan for this year was 14.9%.

How Korea's pension giant became a bystander as Kospi volatility exposed the risks of its home-market bet (Korea JoongAng Daily, 2026-08-06)

출처: koreajoongangdaily.com

The report argues the fund was not on the supporting side while the home market swung hard. The share grew not because the fund bought more shares, but because the shares it already held rose in value.

Why it decided not to sell

A fund sets a target weight for each asset, and when one side grows past that target it sells the excess to bring the mix back. That routine is called rebalancing. Put simply, when one side of the scale gets heavy, you take some off it. The National Pension Service moved the marking on the scale instead. On 28 May its Fund Management Committee raised the domestic equity target to 20.8% in the medium-term allocation plan covering 2027 to 2031. It also widened the band it may drift from that target from 3 percentage points to 6, and with a further 2 points used for tactical shifts, domestic equities may now run as high as 28.8%.

NPS raises its allocation of domestic equities by 5.9 percent (Korea JoongAng Daily, 2026-05-28)

출처: koreajoongangdaily.com

That report puts the increase at 5.9 percentage points. The target went from this year's 14.9% to 20.8% in a single step.

The minutes open in 2030

Article 103-2 of the National Pension Act requires committee minutes to be published after one year, while allowing the committee to vote to push that out to four years if disclosure could unsettle financial markets. The Scoop reported that the four-year option was applied to this decision. Who argued for it, and on what grounds, will therefore not be visible until 2030.

What the Kospi did after May

In the end the market sets the weight. The Kospi closed 2025 at 4,214.17 and ended 10 August at 6,299.66. The index has swung a long way since the end of May, so that weight is a photograph of the date rather than a current reading. If the next disclosure shows the weight back below 28.8%, the market did the rebalancing on its own; if it is still above, domestic equities remain outside the plan even after the target was raised. Either way the decision not to sell stands, and only the reasoning behind it stays covered until 2030. What is at stake for contributors is not the direction of the index but whether they get to see the reasoning.