Health ministry adds debt crisis data to welfare screening system

The health ministry said Tuesday it will link data on illegal private lending victims, vulnerable debtors and halted debt adjustments to its welfare screening system to proactively identify households in financial crisis.

The cabinet approved an amendment adding four new categories of financial and living crisis information to the existing Big Data-based discovery system, increasing the number of risk indicators from 47 to 50. The move follows inter-agency consultations to strengthen support for households threatened by debt.

Under the revised rules, the system will collect information on individuals who have reported damage to the illegal private lending reporting center. It will also expand coverage to include low-income borrowers using policy finance products who show signs of economic difficulty, rather than only those whose applications were previously rejected.

The scope of debt adjustment failures will widen to capture individuals who lose protection due to short-term delinquency of less than 90 days, whereas previously only long-term defaulters were flagged. Additionally, the ministry will incorporate data on households showing abnormal patterns in water usage, moving beyond the current reliance on cases where water service has already been cut off.

"Debt collection causes extreme pain that collapses a person's life and mind beyond mere economic damage," said Hyun Su-yup, first vice minister of health and welfare. "Particularly, those whose debt adjustments are halted face immediate exposure to debt collection and the most urgent crises. This revision lays the legal foundation to capture these financially distressed households without blind spots."