The welfare for the elderly is becoming an important topic. The population of the elderly has been increasing due to both the improvement on medical treatment and the decrease in birth rate. Especially Korea has traditional custom that people supports parents when they become grown-up, so old people used to be controlled within the family itself. However, through civilization, Korean traditional large families have changed to small, nuclear families. Therefore the aged who have lack of money to live or no family to support them, have been becoming a big burden of a society. This study aims at performing a comparative research between Japan and Korea's public reverse mortgage system for one of the alternative solutions of the elderly welfare problems. The speed of becoming an aged society is very fast in Korea and also Japan with similar custom and social system. Japan has been operating a reverse mortgage system since 1980's from some local governments for guaranteeing the welfare for the elderly. Compared to Japan, Korea has been having a short history of public reverse mortgage system since 1997. ‘Korea Housing Finance Corporation’ offers a public reverse mortgage loan named ‘housing pension’. This study tries to find implications suitable to an elderly housing welfare system in Korea by analyzing Japanese public reverse mortgage system which has a longer history.

The welfare for the elderly is becoming an important topic. The population of the elderly has been increasing due to both the improvement on medical treatment and the decrease in birth rate. Especially Korea has traditional custom that people supports parents when they become grown-up, so old people used to be controlled within the family itself. However, through civilization, Korean traditional large families have changed to small, nuclear families. Therefore the aged who have lack of money to live or no family to support them, have been becoming a big burden of a society. This study aims at performing a comparative research between Japan and Korea's public reverse mortgage system for one of the alternative solutions of the elderly welfare problems. The speed of becoming an aged society is very fast in Korea and also Japan with similar custom and social system. Japan has been operating a reverse mortgage system since 1980's from some local governments for guaranteeing the welfare for the elderly. Compared to Japan, Korea has been having a short history of public reverse mortgage system since 1997. ‘Korea Housing Finance Corporation’ offers a public reverse mortgage loan named ‘housing pension’. This study tries to find implications suitable to an elderly housing welfare system in Korea by analyzing Japanese public reverse mortgage system which has a longer history.

public reverse mortgage system, elderly housing welfare system