In April 2021, a retired Seoul-area couple told SBS News they were paying National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) premiums twice on the same jeonse switch. The husband, identified only as Mr. A, had left payroll insurance about two years earlier and had been sending roughly 140,000 won a month based on his lease deposit. Then a second notice arrived in his wife's name for about 150,000 won, even though she had no reported income. The fight was not over medical care. It was over whether a deposit they did not own should sit on NHIS's property ledger, and whether a one-month gap in move-in dates could split one household into two bills.
The bill that arrived twice
Mr. A's story begins where many jeonse stories end: the landlord refuses to renew. In January 2021, two months before the old contract expired, the owner said he would move in himself, SBS reported. The couple scrambled for a new flat. In February, the wife registered her address at the new jeonse while Mr. A stayed behind until March, waiting to collect a 340 million won deposit before paying the next one.
That staggered calendar mattered to NHIS. While both addresses were active, the agency treated them as separate local households, each with its own property score tied to jeonse. Mr. A told the broadcaster that if he cleared out of the old flat before the money returned, he would lose any claim on the 340 million won. NHIS, meanwhile, kept billing him as if the large deposit still sat in his pocket.
When he complained, the reply quoted on air was blunt: if a household splits temporarily before the old lease ends, both sides may owe premiums. An NHIS official told SBS that when jeonse money is stuck after a lease ends, the agency can merge certificates as a relief measure. Mr. A's case sat in the awkward middle, money still in transit, addresses already divided.
The day payroll insurance ends
None of this arithmetic is visible while you are a workplace subscriber. Your employer withholds a share of salary; NHIS prices that coverage mainly from payroll. The shift happens the day after employment ends. Article 9 of the National Health Insurance Act says a workplace worker becomes a local subscriber on the day after the employment relationship ends. Easylaw, the government's plain-language law portal, repeats the same rule for workers asking how to move a family onto local rolls after a resignation.
From that moment, the billing unit is the household, not the payslip. NHIS sums income and property for the whole household and issues one local premium, subject to caps and floors published on its website. For 2024, households with monthly income above 280,000 won pay a 7.09 percent rate on that income component, plus a property charge built from points.
Korea does offer an escape hatch. Workers who had at least one year of workplace coverage in the prior 18 months can apply to remain workplace subscribers for up to 36 months by paying voluntary continuation premiums, NHIS explains on its policy site. That path keeps jeonse off the property roll a little longer, but only if you file within two months of the first local bill and keep paying on time. Miss the window and the jeonse formula waiting below snaps on.
The contrast is why retirees feel blindsided. On payroll, the premium line on your payslip tracks wages; NHIS may later chase undeclared side income, but the jeonse sitting in your landlord's account rarely appears as a monthly charge. The day after your last paycheck, the same deposit can dominate the bill even when your bank balance is thin, because local rules were written to tax imputed housing wealth, not cash on hand.
What local NHIS actually measures
Local premiums are not a flat poll tax. NHIS publishes a two-part formula: income plus property, including jeonse and wolse. For income, interest, dividends, business earnings and miscellaneous items enter at 100 percent of their tax-defined amounts, while wage and pension income enter at 50 percent. The agency then divides annual totals by twelve to reach a monthly income base.
Property is where a tenant's jeonse re-enters. If you do not own the building, NHIS still asks what your lease would be worth on a balance sheet. For jeonse and wolse, the published rule is to take the deposit plus forty times the monthly rent, then count 30 percent of that sum as property wealth. Owned homes, land, ships and aircraft count at full property-tax value instead.
The policy pages stress that local bills are assessed per household. That is why Mr. A's duplicate notices hurt: two registrations during one lease transition can mean two property scores on the same economic life, at least until NHIS agrees to merge them or the old lease fully ends. Freelancers and gap-year workers hit the same ledger the first month their workplace coverage stops.
Turning a deposit into points
Thirty percent is only the first cut. NHIS then subtracts a property basic deduction, 100 million won in the 2024 guidance, before converting what is left into points. Each point multiplied the 2024 per-point charge of 208.4 won. Households with very low income pay a minimum health component of 19,780 won plus property points; high-wealth households hit a monthly ceiling of 4,240,710 won including long-term care under the same table.
Apply the steps to Mr. A's quoted 340 million won deposit. Thirty percent imputes 102 million won of property wealth. Subtract the 100 million won basic deduction and two million won remains on the property side before point tables turn it into won. That is a small net base, but the gross imputation is large, large enough to explain why a retiree with little wage income can still see six-figure monthly bills when other assets or cars sit on the same household file.
The chart shows the other quiet escalator. Even when the 30 percent jeonse share held steady, the price per property point climbed from 178.0 won in 2015 to 208.4 won in 2024 on NHIS tables, a 17 percent rise by our calculation from those published endpoints. A deposit that barely moved on the lease contract could still cost more in premiums because the multiplier on points drifted upward.
NHIS worked examples make the same structure visible with rounder numbers. A sample retiree household with a 90 million won property tax base drew 412 property points in agency training materials, before adding car points and income floors. The lesson is not the exact won in Mr. A's file, which we cannot see, but the mechanism: jeonse enters as imputed wealth, survives a fixed deduction, then rides a point schedule whose unit price keeps rising.
Long-term care stacks on top without a separate jeonse line item. For 2024, NHIS multiplies the health premium by 0.9182 percent and divides by the 7.09 percent health rate, so every won of property-driven health premium drags a sliver of nursing insurance with it. That is how local bills approach the published monthly ceiling of 4,240,710 won for health plus long-term care combined, even for households whose cash income fell off a cliff when employment ended.
When the formula outran the lease
Imputing jeonse is older than the current anxiety about housing costs. Weekly Dong-A reported in 2006 that NHIS raised the jeonse evaluation rate from 20 percent to 30 percent starting with July premiums that year, citing the agency's fear of a sudden spike if property-tax data and lease data landed at once. The piece walked through a 60 million won jeonse: 12 million won counted under the old rate versus 18 million won under the new one.
Politicians later tried to soften the bite for renters. News reports on a 2014 enforcement-rule change described an increase in the jeonse basic deduction from 3 million won to 5 million won at that time, part of a gradual loosening that NHIS now expresses as a 100 million won flat deduction on combined property. Relief also exists for borrowers: a 2022 NHIS webzine says tenants may subtract certain housing loans from property if the evaluated jeonse amount is at most 150 million won, roughly a 500 million won deposit at the 30 percent rate, but only after filing and only for qualifying loans.
Fairness arguments cut both ways. NHIS materials portray property imputation as a way to align contributions with capacity to pay when large leases signal wealth that payroll never shows. Critics like Health World Network's Kim Jae-cheon told SBS that stronger jeonse renewal rights would produce more split-household cases like Mr. A's. The agency's answer is procedural merge rules, not removing jeonse from the roll.
전세 계약 갱신 청구권이 통과되면서 이런 사례가 발생했고, 앞으로 유사 사례는 더 발생할 수 있을 거라는 생각이 들고요.
Households that split on the calendar
Which brings the story back to the kitchen table with two envelopes. Mr. A was not disputing the 30 percent rule on its own; he was caught between lease law's demand to guard a 340 million won deposit and residence law's demand to register where you sleep. NHIS saw two households because two addresses were live at once, even though the money backing the old lease had not yet landed in his account.
전세 기간 종료 후에도 전세금을 받지 못해서 세대가 분리된 경우에는 구제 방법으로 해서 (건강보험)증을 하나로 합쳐드리고 있어요.
Kim Jae-cheon warned on the same broadcast that jeonse renewal rights would multiply similar cases. After the story aired, NHIS told SBS it would review whether Mr. A's situation qualified for an exception. The underlying formula, though, remained on the books: local subscribers carry jeonse on the property roll at thirty percent, household billing turns deposits into points, and the day after your last paycheck is the day that ledger starts counting.
Mr. A's jeonse never became a deed. For NHIS, that distinction matters less than the size of the check he handed the landlord, and the calendar date when he told the government where he slept. Until those two numbers align, the property roll will keep treating his deposit like wealth he already controls.