A Preliminary Study on Enhancing National Pension Coverage for One-Person Non-Wage Workers: Focusing on the Dependent Contractors

Abstract

In recent years, the labor market has undergone rapid diversification in employment, with various forms of labor increasingly transcending the boundaries of traditional employment relationships. Among these, so-called “One-person Non-wage Workers”— including the self-employed, platform workers, and freelancers — are legally classified as the self-employed but often perform labor in a manner that closely resembles that of wage workers, exhibiting a high degree of dependency. Despite this, they are frequently excluded from the protections of labor and social security laws due to the absence of formal employment contracts, placing them in blind spots within social insurance systems such as the National Pension (NP) This situation raises fundamental concerns about institutional coherence and equity between the labor market and public pension systems. In particular, the structure and administration of the NP have been criticized for their inability to adequately respond to the evolving nature of the labor market. Although the NP serves as the core institution in South Korea’s old-age income security system, it has struggled to provide sufficient coverage for vulnerable labor groups with unstable income patterns and ambiguous legal status, such as dependent contractors. To ensure both the sustainability and inclusiveness of the NP, it is imperative to conduct a thorough investigation into the realities of these workers and to fundamentally reconsider the institutional design. This study seeks to analyze the labor conditions and pension status of one-person non-wage workers, identify barriers to their enrollment in the NP, and suggest policy directions for improving their coverage within the system.