Gwangju City to Significantly Relax and Apply Emergency Welfare Support Standards Until March

Gwangju City Hall

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 5th that it will significantly relax the emergency welfare support criteria until March.

The emergency welfare support system is a program that temporarily and promptly provides welfare services such as emergency living expenses and medical expenses to low-income households struggling to maintain their livelihood due to sudden crisis reasons such as the death or unemployment of the main income earner, divorce, business difficulties, or fire.

Looking at the temporarily expanded and improved details, first, the property standard for emergency welfare support recipients has been raised from the previous 188 million KRW to 350 million KRW or less.

The financial asset standard also increased significantly, with the living preparation fund deduction rate expanding from 65% to 150% of the median income, raising the deduction amount from 3.17 million KRW to 7.314 million KRW for a four-person household.

Additionally, socially accepted unavoidable expenses such as marriage and funeral costs, essential living expenses, and the balance of seized bank accounts are deducted and applied.

Cases where income has been lost or sharply decreased due to unpaid leave caused by COVID-19 are also recognized as crisis situations.

The number of support times was previously limited so that re-support was not possible within two years for the same crisis reason or the same illness, but with this measure, re-support is possible after three months have passed since the end of the emergency support.

In particular, starting this year, the support obligation criteria will not be applied when selecting recipients of livelihood benefits for households receiving the National Basic Livelihood Security with elderly or single-parent families.

Accordingly, if the recipient meets the income and property criteria, they will receive livelihood benefits regardless of the presence or absence of a support obligor.

However, the support obligation criteria will continue to apply to support obligors with high income and high property (annual income exceeding 100 million KRW, property exceeding 900 million KRW).

Through this, low-income elderly and single-parent households that had difficulty receiving benefits due to the support obligation criteria will be newly supported.

Citizens who are struggling financially and wish to receive basic livelihood security benefits can apply after consultation at the administrative welfare center of their resident registration address.

The selection criteria for livelihood benefit recipients is 30% of the median income, with a maximum monthly benefit of 548,349 KRW for a single-person household and 1,462,887 KRW for a four-person household.

The actual livelihood benefit amount provided to each household is the amount obtained by deducting the household’s recognized income from the selection criteria, which has been relaxed by 4.02% (21,000 KRW per month) and 2.68% (38,000 KRW per month) compared to last year, respectively.

In addition, Gwangju City is promoting improvements to the Gwangju-type basic security system for low-income citizens who do not receive statutory support, raising the financial asset standard for recipients from 20 million KRW to 25 million KRW, and relaxing the support obligor income standard by 665,000 KRW to 7.314 million KRW for a four-person household compared to the previous year.

In this regard, Gwangju has currently requested the Ministry of Health and Welfare for consultation on changes to the Gwangju-type basic security system improvements and plans to implement the relaxed standards as soon as the consultation is completed.

Park Hyang, Director of the Welfare and Health Bureau of the city, said, “We will strengthen the activities of the community security council and crisis household discovery team in each district to ensure that households suffering from prolonged COVID-19 hardships can receive benefits from the relaxed customized welfare support, and actively support field personnel.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.