Thread by @koryodynasty

Yoon Suk-yeol, S. Korea's leading conservative presidential candidate, is now fuelling xenophobia to win cheap votes, pledging to solve "problem" of foreigners and their dependents leaching on the national health insurance system.

Foreigners actually pay more than they receive.

On a recent Facebook post, he mentions that among the top 10 foreign workers who registered the most dependents, they each had 7-10 family members registered. Also says that among the top ten recipients of health care, 8 were Chinese, of which 6 were dependents.

Yoon then goes on to say the person who received the most health care benefits is Chinese, and over the past 5 years has received about 3.3 billion won in health insurance benefits as a dependent, but only contributed 10% from their own pocket.

As outlined in this OhMyNews article, Yoon is only cherry picking a handful of extreme cases to make a generalisation of the foreign and Chinese population.

His logic is clearly fuelling anti-Chinese and anti-foreigner sentiment. Sounds like Trump.

ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/a…

The fact is that S. Korea's national health insurance service actually makes a *surplus* from contributions by foreigners who pump in more into the system than they are paid out in benefits. A reason for surplus is foreigners actually pay a higher average premium than Koreans.

In 2020, this surplus paid by foreigners was 571.5 billion won. The total health insurance fiscal balance in 2020 was -353.1 billion won. Meaning that, had it not been for the surplus generated by foreign resident contributors, the deficit would have been 924.6 billion won.

That does not mean system is perfect. People may be taking advantage of it. The National Assembly was presented with a bill proposing to amend the law to require family members to reside in Korea for more than 6 months before they can be registered as dependents. Still pending.

As the OhMyNews article concludes, "I think it is more right to explain the overall structure to the people first before talking about a small number of extreme cases." ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/a…

Now in English re: Yoon Suk-yeol's xenophobic remarks against foreigners apparently leeching off the country's national health insurance service.

koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/202…

Lee Jae-myung hit back at Yoon, told him to stop his far right populism that encourages xenophobia, saying that the country profited from foreign national residents' insurance payments, and that the ones who are actually benefiting are Koreans.