The Extension of Social Insurances to the Nonstandard Workforce : Issues and Policy Options

비정규 근로자'에 대한 사회보험 확대 : 쟁점과 정책

Despite the rapid expansion of social security coverage in the 1990s, many wage earners in Korea, especially the majority of the nonstandard workforce are excluded in the social insurance programs. In this regards, the purpose of this paper is to analyze causes of the exclusion of nonstandard workers to the social insurance scheme and to suggest the feasible policy options. Through this paper, four arguments are addressed as follows. First, the main issue for exclusion from coverage of those workers is that they have no entitlement to social insurance. This is not an issue of that they fall below hours or income thresholds for the entitlement Second, the top-down process of the extension in the Korean social insurances have divided the wage earners into two groups, the insider (the included) and the outsider (the excluded). Many nonstandard workers belong to the latter category. Third, the social insurance systems have been designed for the regular workers who were characterized by a full-time with some degree of stability. Reform designed to cope with the growth of nonstandard workers must build on the existing structure of social insurance. Finally, the governance capacity by social security administration body must be improved in order to provide a basic social protection for those workers. For that, four separated social insurance administration bodies could be unified to one administrative body, or tax and contribution of social insurance could be collected by one integrated administration body, the National Tax Service.