The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea developed a credit rating model that reflects national pension payment information to support the economic activities of the financially marginalized who lack financial transaction experience such as the young generation, providing financial benefits such as lowered interest rates on loans to honest national pension payers.

The Republic of Korea’s workers’ compensation supports the return to work of injured workers, as a social safety net protecting national human resources. The Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service (COMWEL) is an organization operating “Customized Integrated Services (CIS)” that establishes a rehabilitation plan for injured workers since 2011, while implementing systematic rehabilitation services according to the established plan, helping the successful rehabilitation of workers.

“Untact” (meaning “contactless”) is one of the high-trending new terms in Korea’s post-COVID-19 era. The global pandemic in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak created new standards that have come to be known as the “new normal”.

The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) is the single insurer in the Republic of Korea that manages health insurance and long-term care insurance under the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW). In the wake of the national crisis due to COVID-19, all employees carried out all efforts for social responsibilities as a public institution and actively responded to overcome the crisis.

By linking and connecting family relations registration data and account information that are essential in claiming national pension payments, we provide a contactless, paperless, and wait-less, or the so-called “3-less” service in pension payments, thereby removing the inconvenience of having to visit the National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea or relevant organizations and reducing the risk of contact in the era of COVID-19.

COVID-19 caused a crisis with economic and employment shocks, which led to increased unemployment and the self-employed shutting down businesses. With prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in the number of citizens (subscribers), who struggled to make payments on national pension premiums.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea made efforts to overcome the COVID-19 crisis by alleviating financial burden by temporarily waiving premium payments and payments of arrears.

The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) of the Republic of Korea has created a smart environment in which visiting a branch office in person for civil services is no longer necessary. By integrating 17 homepages operated by different projects and three mobile apps into a single channel (internet, mobile), citizens no longer need to visit a branch office to access the main NHIS services from November 2020.

In order to effectively unify and manage 11 communication channels, the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) of the Republic of Korea has developed a “Unified Suggestion/Communication Management System” by listening to the needs and opinions of the public and employees about health insurance and long-term care insurance. NHIS is the first public agency in the nation to implement this system.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea developed a digital consultation channel, converting various reports and forms that were previously filled out by hand by customers visiting branches into digital electronic forms. This reduces costs related to creating and processing paper documents, while customers can complete filling out forms using electronic signature on a touch screen. The NPS creates a paperless office environment, while providing digital administration service to customers that minimizes contact time between employees and customers.

Following the social trend of greater use of smart phones than personal computers (PCs), the National Pension Service (NPS) aims to make processes more efficient and innovate on services through various means in order to effectively introduce and promote the national pension scheme:

Occupational trauma can affect a wide range of individuals exposed, including not only the people who experienced the traumatic event first-hand, but also those who witnessed the event, the primary victim’s family and friends, bereaved family members and those who feel responsible for the event, police, firefighters, and people engaged in an emergency service.

Among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the Republic of Korea is the fastest ageing country, making preparing for retirement a serious social issue. The government has named baby boomers, which account for 14.6 per cent of the total population, “the new middle-aged” and is providing and implementing social measures for them.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea has recently introduced a number of initiatives to support members who are about to retire. These efforts include:

The National Health Alarm Services (NHAS) of Korea offers various health alarms to the public before the epidemic spreads out rapidly. They combine different data from diverse sources such as national health information from the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS), social networking sites (SNS) such as twitter, blogs, etc., data from Daumsoft Corporation, climate information from the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), air pollution information from the Ministry of Environment (MOE), and food poisoning information from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS).

In 2012, discussions on introducing a basic pension system began in earnest and in September 2013, the Republic of Korea government announced a basic pension system plan.

While the national pension enrolment rate for regular workers in Korea was 82 per cent in 2015, the rate for non-regular workers was a mere 38 per cent, showing weak retirement planning. There was a call to strengthen the social safety net and to realize “pension per person” by reducing the risk of non-regular workers falling through the cracks of the social insurance system amid a gradual rise in the number of non-regular workers such as daily and part-time workers due to labor market flexibility.

The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) of the Republic of Korea has developed the National Family Caregiver Support Programme (NFCSP) to ease the burden of family caregivers of long-term care (LTC) recipients. In this programme, specialized NHIS counsellors screen family caregivers experiencing heavy burdens, evaluate their unique circumstances, and then offer a variety of services tailored to their needs.

The consolidated collection system for five major insurances was implemented in January 2011 by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) in the Republic of Korea. To complete the task, six legal amendments were made, which involved two ministries, two standing committees of the National Assembly, and three organizations. With the consolidated collection system, methods of collection (notification → collection → compliance) that used to be different for each organization were redesigned in terms of procedures, standards and forms.

Practical actions included the integrated reform of the existing counselling systems, the identification of priority customers using reasonable standards, and the case management of identified priority customers.

In terms of outcomes for one year, since its introduction, the number of personnel in charge of various return-to-work programmes increased to 3,285 in 2011, 297 per cent up against 828 in 2010, and the return-to-work rate of disabled workers increased to 70.4 per cent in 2011, 6.3 percentage points up against 64.1 per cent in 2010.

To solve this problem, the NPS has concluded a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the social security institutions (SSI) of seven countries which enables us to exchange data on beneficiaries residing in partner countries. As a result of the data exchange - using a method which emphasizes confidentiality as a top priority - NPS has confirmed the death of 13 of its beneficiaries and partner institutions confirmed nine of theirs.

The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) has established 42 workers’ health centers nationwide to provide complimentary health services to workers in workplaces with less than 50 employees, who show higher prevalence of diseases based on health examinations and who work under poorer environments that are prone to exposure to more harmful factors.

Therefore, the Korea Worker's Compensation and Welfare Service (COMWEL), a public institution, decided to create the "Public Retirement Pension Service" to close the gap in the autonomous market economy and reduce the social cost caused by income poverty in retirement. We constructed a customized overall process for small companies: simplicity of introduction and management, a wide scope of retirement pension education and public relations, and low charges.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea became the first in the world to adopt an airport payment service of lump-sum refunds when it started paying lump-sum refunds to foreigners returning home at Incheon International Airport since July 2010. NPS has made a total of 300 billion Korean won (KRW) of lump-sum refund payments to 50,000 recipients to date via the airport payment service offered by its Incheon Airport Service Centre.

The process-based knowledge management system enables working-level staff to improve the efficiency of their individual work through automatic notifications, automated storage and a highly-refined search capability which allows information to be retrieved that is most relevant to data entered by users and the work in progress.

The process optimization technique enabled the timely identification and resolution of possible problems by managing the work in progress on a real-time basis, quantitative analysis of results, and the innovation of relevant processes.

The NPS has a policy of equal treatment for nationals and foreigners and strives to provide foreigners with a range of services comparable to those provided to Korean nationals. These include phone consultations, online questions and answers (Q&A), home visits, and payment of the lump-sum refund of contributions at the airport, among others. Going forward, the NPS will continue to actively develop and promote these and other services for foreigners.

This project has extended the rehabilitation services offered by the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service (COMWEL), namely, medical, social and work rehabilitation. A service delivery system has also been developed to help industrially injured workers (IIW) return to work and ultimately improve the quality of life.

In an effort to protect these workers' benefit eligibility, and to improve the application procedure, the NPS has concluded Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with the social security institutes (SSI) of countries where substantial numbers of such immigrant workers reside.

Working with identification information provided by NPS, partner SSIs assist immigrant workers (many of whom have not yet applied for NPS benefits) in applying for NPS benefits so that these workers can obtain NPS benefits in their home countries without the need for notarization or attestation.

The National Pension Service (NPS) developed a social insurance computer network that connects the databases of the four national social insurance programmes on pensions, health, employment and workers’ compensation. In February 2003, the NPS established the Social Insurance Information Center (the Center) that allows citizens to access all four social security schemes by visiting (or via online) any one office of the three administering organizations.

The Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service (COMWEL) administers the following system as a strong shield for the protection of claims for wages of workers: