Photo: National Health Insurance Service. Credit: Doctors News.
Among South Koreans, a long-standing complaint against immigrants is the burden they supposedly place on the National Health Insurance Service 국민건강보험 - a sentiment that has been intensified lately by South Korean conservatives’ anti-China rhetoric.
According to the NHIS, however, its own data contained significant errors masking the fact that Chinese nationals are net contributors to the NHIS. Nearly all foreign nationals who are registered with the NHIS are net contributors, as they tend to be immigrants of working age. The sole exception has been Chinese nationals, who collectively have been causing a loss in the past several years. But according to the NHIS’s March 2 report, correcting for data entry errors shows that there were little to no losses.
In 2020, for example, the data was corrected from a loss of KRW 23.9b (USD 16.4m) to a gain of KRW 36.5b (USD 25.1m) attributable to Chinese nationals on the NHIS, a net change of more than KRW 60b. Similarly for 2023, a loss of KRW 64b (USD 43.9m) was adjusted to a loss of KRW 2.7b (USD 1.9m), a swing of more than KRW 61b. The NHIS blamed the error on large-scale staff turnover.
