In social security law beneficiary can be eligible to receive plural benefits on the grounds of same or different insured risk(s). For instance employees who are eligible to receive benefits under the industrial accident compensation insurance are also eligible to receive other benefits, such as disability benefits and survivor’s benefit under the national pension insurance. And the unemployed above the age of 60 meets the requirements of the unemployment benefits and old age pension simultaneously.
In order to prevent double benefits the Korean social insurance law provides some rules concerning the coordination of benefits. When a person is eligible to the benefits of both the industrial accident compensation insurance and the national pension insurance, he receives the full benefit of the industrial accident compensation insurance and the 50% of the national pension insurance. And when a person is eligible to two or more benefits in national pension insurance, he can choose only one benefit in principle. However, there is an exceptional clause, by which the 20% of the chosen survivor’s benefit is payed with a chosen benefit.
Coordination of benefits is necessary to prevent a person with duplicate benefits from profiting from his or her insured risk. The profit from duplicative benefits may result in unfairness among the beneficiaries, i. e. depending on the covered accident certain persons are entitled to the duplicate benefits, whereas some are not,
Nonetheless there are no basic principles to determine the order of benefits in Korea. Due to the lack of uniform rules there is no satisfactory way to deal with duplicate benefits. So the National Pension Insurance Act, which uniquely rules the coordination of duplicate benefits, contains no provision in other cases. So the unemployed above the age of 60 can receive both unemployment benefit and old age pension. And theoretically the injured employee (above 60) due to industrial accident can receive old age pension and the unemployment benefit if he is unemployed.
So it is necessary to provide the general rule to determine the sequence of the benefits. However, in some cases it is not easy to decide which benefit must be payed at first or whether the coordination of the benefit ever fair solution is.
In that sense the general rule should be regulated in the organic Act(for instance Framework Act on the Social Security) and serve as a principle, and the concrete coordination of benefits must be ruled in special Acts. At any rate the principle of coordination of benefit is: it should never pay more, and it should never pay less.