A sickness benefit for all, leaving no one behind.

Abstract

South Korea's pilot sickness benefit program, launched in 2022 across six regions and currently operating in 14 regions as of 2025, represents a critical juncture in the country's social protection development. While ostensibly designed with inclusive eligibility criteria, the program reveals fundamental paradoxes that illuminate deeper structural inequalities within Korea's dualized labor market. This opinion piece examines how current design choices risk undermining universal health coverage goals by systematically excluding the most precarious workers. The program's design features-including low replacement rates (60% of the minimum wage) and extended waiting periods-created perverse incentives where the most vulnerable workers accepted the least favorable conditions. This pattern exemplifies what Korpi and Palme termed the "paradox of redistribution," where targeted approaches ultimately prove less effective than universal ones, with the second phase's restriction to the bottom 50% income bracket threatening to exacerbate this paradox. Successful implementation will depend on integrating equity, people-centered design, and gender-transformative perspectives into every phase-design, operation, evaluation, and reform. In doing so, South Korea has the opportunity to offer a model of sickness protection that does not simply patch gaps, but actively reshapes the structures that produce health and economic inequalities in the first place.