Health ministry links passport system to block improper welfare payments

South Korea's health ministry said it will link its social security information system with the foreign ministry's passport system from Oct. 2, giving local officials real-time confirmation of temporary passports issued to children born abroad and tightening checks on benefits such as child allowances and parental payments.

Benefits for children are suspended when they are confirmed to have stayed abroad for 90 days or longer, verified through a link to the justice ministry's immigration system. But when a child leaves again on a temporary passport, that departure is not picked up in time. Immigration records cannot be matched to the child's file in the social security system because temporary passports carry no resident registration number. In cases where parents miss reporting a departure or deliberately conceal it, long stays overseas have gone unreflected and benefits have been paid improperly, only to be halted and clawed back later, burdening local officials.

Until now, local government officials had to collect copies of temporary passports once a year and register the passport numbers in the system to check immigration records.

The health ministry built the real-time link between the two systems in August after consultations with the foreign ministry. From October, officials handling benefit applications will be notified automatically when a child holds a temporary passport and will be able to register the passport information directly. The ministry expects the change to prevent improper payments in advance and cut unnecessary suspension and recovery procedures, improving both the accuracy and efficiency of benefit management.

"This improvement was selected as a first-round task of the national normalization project and is a case in which cooperation between related ministries promptly fixed irrationality and inefficiency in the welfare benefit management process," said Park Chang-kyu, a welfare administration support official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. "We will continue to actively identify and improve irrational and inefficient practices to build efficient welfare administration that the public can trust."