Property seizures by South Korea's National Health Insurance Service for overdue premiums rose 67% between 2021 and 2025 – but revenue recovered through enforcement fell by nearly half over the same period.
That gap – between seizure volume and actual collection – is the central finding from data submitted to the National Assembly in September 2026. For brokers and private insurers in the Korean market, the numbers carry direct commercial weight.
Property seizures for overdue NHIS premiums rose 67% between 2021 and 2025, climbing from 1,005,354 cases to 1,682,861, according to data submitted by the NHIS to Assemblyman Seo Youngseok of the Democratic Party, as reported by The Asia Business Daily.
Deposit seizures, as a share of total seized assets, rose from 66.4% to 78.3%. Real estate seizures moved in the opposite direction – falling 24%, from 52,532 cases in 2021 to 39,975 in 2025 – with the real estate seizure rate dropping from 5.2% to 2.4%.
The auction conversion rate tells the sharpest part of the story. Fewer than 0.3% of real estate seizures resulted in a public auction in either year: 134 requests out of 52,532 seizures in 2021 (0.26%) and 114 out of 39,975 in 2025 (0.29%). Revenue recovered through public auction fell approximately 45%, from 1.2 billion won in 2021 to 660 million won in 2025.
The NHIS cited prior liens and insufficient property surplus as factors that block the auction process even after a seizure is formally in place.
Read next: Korean insurers are becoming distribution architects, not just underwriters
Of the 10,444 habitual delinquents publicly named by the NHIS in 2025, 77.4% – or 8,087 individuals – owned no property at all.
The remainder includes a growing cluster of multi-property owners. Those holding more than 30 residential properties rose from six in 2022 to 37 in 2025. Those with more than 100 properties grew ninefold, from one to nine. The single largest property holder among named delinquents owned 764 residential units, with others holding 316, 231, 226, and 180.
Assemblyman Seo described this as a failure of targeted enforcement. “As the number of habitual delinquents with dozens or hundreds of homes whose personal information is being made public increases, there is a need for more thorough collection management targeting high-value and habitual delinquents with the clear ability to pay,” he said.
He also called for a root-cause audit. “We must analyze the causes of low auction conversion rates by category and accurately assess how many cases face difficulties in auction due to lack of surplus or prior claims, so that concrete and effective collection measures can be devised,” Seo said.
The collection shortfall sits inside a deteriorating financial picture for the NHIS overall.
The fund’s current account surplus fell 88% between 2023 and 2025 – from 4.1 trillion won to 499.6 billion won – according to NHIS fiscal results. Insurance benefit spending rose 8.4% in 2025, while total revenue grew only 3.8%.
In the first quarter of 2026, the fund ran a deficit of approximately 3.9 trillion won, with revenue of 22.4 trillion won against spending of 26.3 trillion won, according to The Korea Times. The cumulative reserve dropped from 30.2 trillion won at end-2025 to 26.3 trillion won. The Health Ministry had forecast an annual net loss for 2026 as early as February 2024.
NHIS president Jung Ki-suck said earlier this year that while a 2026 deficit is projected, the service would “strengthen the financial soundness of the health insurance system through rigorous expenditure management,” according to Korea BioMed Review.
The longer-term outlook is more severe. A study published in Health Economics Review in November 2025, using NHIS financial data and Statistics Korea projections, found that accumulated reserves are expected to be depleted by 2030. Annual deficits are projected to grow from 21.8 trillion won in 2032 to 123.3 trillion won by 2042.
Read next: Bond market collapse exposes a two-tier Korean insurance sector
The NHIS’s collection and fiscal problems are directly relevant to the private market, because they compound an existing structural gap in public coverage.
According to the OECD’s Health at a Glance 2025 Korea country note, only 60% of health spending in South Korea is covered through mandatory prepayment schemes, against a 75% OECD average. That gap is already a driver of private sector demand.
Personal accident and health insurance in South Korea is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 9.3% between 2025 and 2029, according to GlobalData.
Growth, though, comes alongside a live pricing problem. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) reported that indemnity health insurance posted a loss of 1.87 trillion won in 2025. The Life and General Insurance Association of Korea announced a weighted average premium increase of approximately 7.8% for indemnity products in 2026, with some fourth-generation policyholders facing increases of around 20%.
A public insurer that cannot convert property seizures into cash – including from delinquents who own hundreds of homes – faces a revenue constraint that enforcement reform will not resolve quickly. For brokers, that dynamic points toward a widening role for private and supplemental health products, alongside a market in which premium adequacy is already under active pressure.
