2 Primary Issues Facing the Income Guarantee System When social insurances were first introduced in Korea, they were implemented with businesses with 500 or more employees, and the implementation has been expanded. By bringing self-employed workers under its coverage in 1998, NPS was expanded to all Koreans. EI and IACI were also expanded to all establishments with one or more employees in 1998 and in 2001, respectively. Nevertheless, workers in vulnerable employment groups — including daily workers working for shorter than a month, part-time workers, and small-scale construction workers — remain excluded from employee-insured coverage. This forces them to accept their insurance status, for which they have to solely pay whole contributions despite their status as workers. Primary Issues Facing the Income Guarantee System Background for the Discussion on Social Insurance Reform Social insurance reform has become necessary as an increasing number of employed individuals find themselves not covered by the employment insurance due to the expansion of non-standard forms of work (NSFW), stemming from growing employment insecurity. From a legal standpoint, the pension and health insurances cover the entire Korean population while EI and IACI for salaried employees provide coverage to all establishments. However, there is a significant difference in the actual coverage depending on the employment status(Figure 2). While most employees with regular employment statuses are covered by all four social insurances, those falling under the NSFW category have very low coverage. While home work represents the highest rate of NPS­uninsured workers(69.4%), on-call work shows the highest rate of NHI-uninsured individuals(93.4%). Individuals in pure self-employment can voluntarily join EI, but only a mere 0.5% of them actually do enjoy EI coverage. On the contrary, in Korea, the number of individuals not covered by NHI is extremely low irrespective of employment status. This is because NSFW workers with income and wealth below a certain level can have NHI coverage as dependents of their employee-insured family members. In all, 44.9% of homeworkers, 40.3% of part­timers, and 25%. Recent Issues Facing Social Security in South Korea