Retirement Management of FIREFIGHTERS in KOREA

Among the ways to improve the treatment of firefighters, firefighter retirement management is important, and to look at the previous studies, many results derived show that firefighters are worried about life after re-tirement because there is poor practice of retirement management due to lack of retirement management sys-tem. Thus, this study attempts to examine the retirement management system of public firefighters to improve the treatment for firefighters, and to investigate current problems and future improvement strategies. To im-prove the retirement management of Korean fire bodies, the following should be urgently improved. First, the public firefighter’s retirement management system should be settled. Currently, in the case of firefighting organ-izations, the regulations on retirement management are insufficient, and there is also a lack of legal and institu-tional arrangements for dedicated organizations, personnel and/or programs. Because of this, public firefighters are complaining about the inconvenience that they should do their own retirement management themselves. Since the retirement management system is so insufficient as compared to other private companies and general public officers and police officers, the legal system for firefighter retirement management should be provided first. Second, it is necessary to establish a special organization that specializes only in retirement management in the firefighting organization, and it is necessary to employ the appropriate personnel for the firefighting re-tirement management organization and operate various retirement management programs. Third, it is neces-sary to maintain a cooperative relationship with other organizations’ retirement management systems, such as introducing private retirement management programs and attracting beneficial lectures, by benchmarking or-ganizations that are currently performing well in retirement management such as private companies. This is because retirement management of firefighting organizations is at the basic stage, and it is considered that the linkage with other organizations will have a synergy effect. Lastly, firefighters have insufficient retirement man-agement owing to the difficulty managing every single day without thinking about the future because they have difficulty in working conditions and environment. Therefore, if the firefighters’ working environment and treat-ment are urgently improved, it is judged that there is room for mind enough to consider retirement management.