Cabinet Receives Report on Revised Social Security Plan on the 26th
Eased Basic Living Criteria, Nursing-Care Coverage Under Health Insurance, and AI-Driven Welfare Administration Included
The Lee Jae-myung administration has shifted its approach from narrowly targeted welfare for the most vulnerable toward a new social-security direction it calls “welfare for all,” aiming to support citizens across their entire life course. Key initiatives include studying a basic income, extending national health insurance to cover nursing-care costs, and building AI-driven automated welfare administration.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on the 26th, the government reported the “Revised Plan for the 3rd Basic Social Security Plan” to the Cabinet and decided to move beyond a welfare model centered solely on the disadvantaged to establish a universal welfare system that guarantees a basic standard of living for all citizens.
The revision was prepared in response to social changes such as the AI transition, low birth rates, and population aging. The government defined its welfare philosophy as “welfare for all.”
The government presented the vision “Welfare for All, a Society Where We Thrive Together.” It will pursue three strategic pillars—income security that safeguards citizens’ lives, strengthening basic services, and innovating the social-security foundation—and implement nine priority initiatives.
In the area of income security, the plan includes a phased relaxation of the eligibility criteria for basic living benefits and the abolition of the family-support obligation for medical aid. The government also plans to introduce sickness benefits.
The package also includes measures to support children and youth, such as expanding the age range for child allowances, creating a new youth “future savings” program, and increasing support for the Youth Tomorrow Savings Account.
For older adults, the plan proposes improving the couple-reduction rule for basic pensions, taking a phased approach to mandating retirement pensions, and promoting home-equity conversion programs.
The government officially included a direction for basic income. To address labor-market changes driven by the AI transition and the limitations of the existing social-security system, it will review the introduction of a basic income as a new social safety net.
The plan also tasks local governments with creating “Sunlight Income Villages” at the community level and launching pilot basic-income projects in farming and fishing communities.
In care and health, the plan calls for nationwide implementation of community-based integrated care and measures to strengthen care across the life course. Representative examples include support for public postpartum care centers, gap-filling childcare for infants and toddlers, and daily-care support for young and middle-aged adults.
In healthcare, the government will pursue a regionally self-sufficient essential medical system by implementing a regional physician program, promoting the establishment of public medical schools, and strengthening the role of national university hospitals.
The plan includes expanding integrated nursing-and-caregiving services and moving to cover caregiving costs under national health insurance. In mental-health policy, it will expand programs addressing social isolation and loneliness and extend solitary-death prevention efforts to include social isolation.
The government will transition the welfare-administration system to an AI-centered model. It plans to build an AI-enabled system that connects welfare counseling with applications, automatically delivers universal benefits without separate applications, and gradually converts selective benefits to an automated payment system.
The revision also calls for strengthened financial support to counter local decline and for building a regional-welfare system based on central-local cooperation. The revised plan will apply from 2026 through 2030.
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