What does the Korean word 4대 보험 mean?

4대 보험 is a Korean word we see in many documents sent to us for 3rd party review. We have seen it translated as, “4th insurance,” “the 4 types of insurance,” and even, “various insurance plan.” Do any of these make sense? What’s the best possible translation? Questions nearly always come up about documents containing this word, so we wanted to provide some helpful information.

To translate this word faithfully a bit of background knowledge of the Korean wage system and regulations is required.

4대 보험 refers to Korean “national insurance.” It refers to the insurance managed by the Korean government that must be purchased by everyone (who is working). Money is deducted from Korean pay checks monthly to pay for these insurance premiums. However, even Koreans are often not fully aware of how their money is being spent, or what the benefits are.

4대 보험 includes:

• national pension insurance (국민연금보험)

• employment insurance (고용보험)

• health insurance (건강보험) and

• workers' compensation (산재보험)

The 4 comes from the fact there are 4 types of insurance included.

Korean regulation stipulates how each of these four premiums are calculated. We may cover the specific regulations in a future post.

It’s probably best to translate 4대 보험 as “mandatory insurance” or “Korean national insurance” and insert a translators note about why the 4 is missing in the English target. Your client or project manager probably doesn’t know Korean, so they may panic when they cannot locate the 4.