This work was carried out by the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS). The report was prepared by Stefan Thewissen and Christopher Prinz, with contributions from Rachelle Cohen, Taehoon Lee and Kyungmin Noh. Dana Blumin provided the statistical analysis, and Natalie Corry prepared the report for publication.
The work was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Employment and Labour of the Republic of Korea. The grant covered work on new or extended social protection for workers in two circumstances: sickness and unemployment. The two topics are covered in two separate reports which are published concurrently.
The OECD team would like to thank various experts from the Ministry of Employment and Labour of the Republic of Korea for their continuous support during the project, including the provision of relevant data and policy information, and their comments to an earlier version of the report. The team would also like to thank the participants in two discussions about the sickness policy pilots and sickness policy challenges in Korea more generally with experts from the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Junmi Lee, Namhyo Kim), the National Health Insurance Service (Sunjin Du, Minkyung Jung), the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (Heechung Kang, Sujin Oh, Kitae Kim), the Hanyang University College of Medicine (Inah Kim, Yangwoo Kim) and the Korea Labour Institute (June Namgoong). Finally, comments have also been received from Mark Keese, Mark Pearson, and Stefano Scarpetta.
The painting on the front cover comes from Ateliers Personimages, a French non-profit association promoting artistic creation for persons with disabilities (www.personimages.org).