Hurt on the Job — Your Employer's Stamp Hasn't Been Required Since 2018

The number one reason injured foreign workers never file an industrial accident (산재) claim is "my company won't do it for me." But that premise disappeared eight years ago. The requirement to attach a document recording the employer's (the policyholder's) confirmation of how the accident happened to the medical care benefit application was deleted by Ministry of Employment and Labor Ordinance No. 204 (promulgated December 27, 2017) and took effect on January 1, 2018.

Today the direction runs the other way. Article 20(2) of the Enforcement Rules of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that once the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service (COMWEL) receives a medical care benefit application, it notifies the employer of that fact and hears the employer's opinion. The job of collecting confirmation moved from the worker to COMWEL.

You Are the One Who Files, Not Your Company

Article 36(2) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act (in force from July 1, 2026, Act No. 21375) provides that insurance benefits are paid "upon the claim of the person entitled to receive them (the beneficiary)." The person who files is the injured worker, and the structure is not one where the company applies on your behalf.

Paying the premiums works the opposite way. Under Article 5(3) of the Act on the Collection of Insurance Premiums for Employment Insurance and Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance, the policyholder is the employer who uses workers, not the worker. The main text of Article 6 of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that the Act applies to every business or workplace that employs workers, and there is no provision making nationality or residency status a condition of application. The Ministry of Government Legislation's practical law information service likewise explains that a workplace employing non-professional employment (E-9) or working visit (H-2) foreign workers automatically becomes an industrial accident insurance policyholder.

Whenever residency status comes up, one court ruling is cited again and again. Supreme Court Decision 94Nu12067, September 15, 1995 (revocation of a disapproval of medical care benefits) held that a foreigner injured while working without employment eligibility is still a worker under the Labor Standards Act, because they provided labor in a relationship of subordination and received wages, and is therefore eligible for medical care benefits under the (former) Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act. That said, paragraph (b) of the same decision's holding also states that, unless an employment relationship has already been formed, an employment relationship with a foreigner lacking employment eligibility is suspended and either party may terminate the employment contract at any time on that ground. What this ruling guarantees is the right to claim medical care benefits for labor already provided, not the right to keep working.

There is one more point where conclusions split. Under the proviso to Article 6, Article 2(1) of the Enforcement Decree excludes certain businesses from application: subparagraph 6 excludes businesses in agriculture, forestry (excluding logging), fishing, and hunting that are run by a non-corporate operator and regularly employ fewer than five workers, and subparagraph 4 excludes domestic employment activities in a household. Because agriculture and livestock farming are among the industries open to E-9 holders, real cases do fall in this gap.

If you read those two rows as one thing, your judgment flips to the opposite. "The company didn't enroll" and "the law doesn't apply" are two different stories.

"Employer Confirmation" Disappeared in 2018, and Here Is What You Actually File

The repeal can be confirmed three separate ways. First, the stated reason for amending Ministry of Employment and Labor Ordinance No. 204 was to "delete, from the documents attached to an application for industrial accident medical care benefits, the confirmation by the employer as policyholder regarding how the accident occurred, which has been acting as a constraint on such applications." Second, the current Article 20 of the Enforcement Rules (in force from February 2, 2026, Ministry of Employment and Labor Ordinance No. 461) contains no employer-confirmation clause at all, and the article ends with "[Wholly amended December 27, 2017]." Third, in a Ministry of Employment and Labor press release (August 26, 2019), the president of COMWEL confirmed, "following our abolition last year of the employer confirmation system for industrial accident claims."

In practice you submit two forms. Under Article 41(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, you apply to COMWEL stating your workplace, how the accident occurred, medical findings, and so on, and the forms are the Application for Medical Care Benefits (Enforcement Rules, Attached Form No. 2) and the Medical Opinion for a Medical Care Benefit Application (Attached Form No. 3). Depending on the injury or illness, a specialist opinion form for cerebrovascular or cardiac disease (Attached Form No. 3-2) or for musculoskeletal disease (Attached Form No. 3-3) may be added. If circumstances make it impossible to get the opinion on COMWEL's own form, an ordinary medical certificate (opinion) can be used instead, and a 2019 overhaul cut the number of entry fields on the application form from 45 to 27.

At the Hospital on the Day You Are Hurt, and What If You Used Health Insurance First

The threshold you hit before the law is the hospital. If the cost worries you and you tough it out for a few days before going, even the question of "was this a work injury?" gets blurry. Get treatment the same day you're hurt, and at check-in say plainly, "I got hurt at work." When, where, and doing what you were injured has to be in the first line of your medical record for it to serve as the starting point for later decisions. The hospital process itself is covered separately in How Foreigners Use Hospitals in Korea.

Even if you were treated under National Health Insurance first, there's a way to unwind it. Article 53(1)4 of the National Health Insurance Act provides that health insurance benefits are not paid where you are to receive compensation under another statute for a disease, injury, or accident arising from work, but Article 90(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act sets up a separate settlement route between the two agencies. Under that provision, if the National Health Insurance Service claims the costs it paid first, COMWEL may pay the amount recognized as corresponding to industrial accident medical care benefits. How your own medical costs get settled is not something you can decide for yourself, so ask ☎1588-0075.

Where and How to File, and What "7 Days" Really Means

There is more than one way to file. There are four: visiting a COMWEL regional headquarters or branch office, mail, fax, and online filing through the Employment and Industrial Accident Insurance Total Service (total.comwel.or.kr), and a fifth, where the hospital files for you. Article 41(2) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that an industrial-accident-designated medical institution that treated the worker may, if it judges the accident to be work-related, file the application on the worker's behalf with the worker's consent (the consent confirmation document is attached under Article 20(1) of the Enforcement Rules). If Korean-language paperwork is daunting, this route is the realistic one. The main phone number is ☎1588-0075.

Article 21(1) of the Enforcement Rules sets the decision deadline at 7 days from the date the application is received. But paragraph (2) of the same article carves six periods out of those 7 days. It is more accurate to read 7 days as a number with many exceptions, not as a minimum.

COMWEL's own guidance shows that the recognition process itself splits by type of accident. Diseases go through a basic investigation and specialist consultation before heading to the Occupational Disease Determination Committee, while accidents and commuting accidents are decided after a basic accident investigation and medical consultation. COMWEL's process guidance does not state how long each type takes, so we won't estimate a timeline like "usually a few months" either. To check where your case stands, have your receipt number ready and call ☎1588-0075.

How Far Coverage Goes, Including Commuting Accidents and Occupational Diseases

Article 37(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act divides work-related accidents into three branches.

• Occupational accidents — accidents during work under the employment contract, accidents caused by defects in or poor management of facilities provided by the employer, accidents during events hosted or directed by the employer, and even accidents during break time arising from acts that can be seen as under the employer's control and management.
• Occupational diseases — diseases caused by handling or exposure to hazardous factors, diseases caused by a work-related injury, and diseases caused by work-related mental stress from workplace harassment under Article 76-2 of the Labor Standards Act or from abusive language by customers and the like.
• Commuting accidents — accidents during a commute under the employer's control and management, such as in transportation provided by the employer, and other accidents during a commute by a usual route and method.

If your dormitory is inside the workplace or right next door, the line between break time and commuting gets blurry. This situation rarely comes up for Korean commuters, so it is easy to pass right by without even knowing the distinction exists. Don't drop your claim on your own because it seems ambiguous — write down exactly what happened at the filing stage.

What You Get and How Much: 8 Benefits and Two Different "3 Days"

Article 36(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act sets out eight insurance benefits.

And "3 days" appears twice, under two different rules.

Falling into the first band, where medical care benefits aren't paid, doesn't mean you get nothing. Article 78(1) of the Labor Standards Act requires the employer to provide necessary treatment at its own expense or bear the treatment costs, and Article 79(1) requires compensation for absence from work equal to 60/100 of the average wage for a worker under treatment. Since Article 80(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that an employer is exempt from accident compensation liability under the Labor Standards Act where the worker has received or can receive insurance benefits, the structure is that in the band where you cannot receive them, that liability remains. That said, this is an interpretation stitched together from statutes, so check how it's handled in practice at ☎1350.

When Your Company Threatens You: Three Penalty Provisions, Three Different Laws

If you've been told "file a claim and you're fired," start by separating the provisions. The three below may look similarly named, but they come from different laws and carry different penalties (as of 2026).

There's one more document that's especially easy to confuse because the name sounds similar. The Industrial Accident Investigation Report is completely separate from your own medical care benefit claim. Under Article 73(1) of the Enforcement Rules of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, it is the document (Attached Form No. 30) that the employer submits to the competent regional employment and labor office within one month of the date of occurrence when there is a fatality or an accident requiring three or more days off work, and the employer must obtain confirmation from the workers' representative (or, if there is none, from the injured worker) (Article 73(3)). Failing to report or reporting falsely carries an administrative fine of up to 15,000,000 KRW (Article 175(3)2 of the same Act). Your company filing this report does not mean your medical care benefit claim has been filed.

If You Are Denied, and the Time Limits: 90 Days, 3 Years, 5 Years, and What Varies by Case

The procedure you use when you receive a disapproval notice is called neither an "objection" nor an "administrative appeal." Article 103(5) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act flatly states that no administrative appeal under the Administrative Appeals Act may be filed against a decision on insurance benefits. If you use the wrong name, the service window will route you to a different procedure.

• Request for examination — File it with COMWEL, through the COMWEL body that made the decision, within 90 days from the date you learned that a decision on insurance benefits was made (Article 103(2) and (3)). COMWEL decides within 60 days from the date it receives the request, extendable once by up to 20 days if unavoidable (Article 105(1)).
• Request for reexamination — If you're not satisfied with that decision, file with the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Reexamination Committee within 90 days from the date you learned of the decision (Article 106(1) and (3)). For a decision that went through deliberation by the Occupational Disease Determination Committee, you can skip the request for examination and go straight to a request for reexamination (proviso to Article 106(1)).
• Administrative litigation — A ruling on a request for reexamination is treated as a ruling on an administrative appeal for purposes of Article 18 of the Administrative Litigation Act (Article 111(2)). A ruling by the Reexamination Committee binds COMWEL (Article 109(2)).

There are two kinds of statute of limitations too. The right to receive insurance benefits is extinguished if not exercised for 3 years, and for disability benefits, survivors' benefits, funeral expenses, the pneumoconiosis compensation annuity, and the pneumoconiosis survivors' annuity it is 5 years (Article 112(1)). A claim under Article 36(2) interrupts the limitation period, and where that claim is the first claim requiring a determination of whether the accident is work-related, the interruption also extends to other insurance benefits (Article 113). Filing a request for examination or reexamination is also treated as a judicial claim under Article 168 of the Civil Act (Article 111(1)). That said, when the clock starts can differ by benefit, so we won't pin it down here. Article 112 sets only the periods and does not separately set the starting point.

Your rights remain even if you quit the company or your contract ends. Article 88(1) provides that the right to receive insurance benefits is not extinguished by the worker's retirement or departure from the job. That said, we could not verify from primary sources how payment actually works once you have left the country. If circumstances mean you have to go, ask ☎1588-0075 before you leave.

Settling with the company and taking money is common too. Settling doesn't strip you of the right to file, but Article 80(3) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that where you receive money or goods equivalent to insurance benefits under the Civil Act or other statutes for the same cause, insurance benefits are not paid up to the limit of the amount converted by the method prescribed by Presidential Decree. The accurate sentence stops at "you can still file even after settling, and money you already received may be adjusted." The conversion method and ratio are not covered in this article.

Don't read the five items below and judge them yourself. Every one of them is something to have confirmed at ☎1588-0075.

• Whether your workplace is covered by industrial accident insurance — whether the exclusions in Article 2 of the Enforcement Decree apply turns on the type of workplace and the number of regular workers.
• Whether a proximate causal relationship between the work and the accident is recognized — this is the requirement in the proviso to Article 37(1), and COMWEL is the body that decides.
• Whether your disease goes to the Occupational Disease Determination Committee — we could not verify the scope of cases it deliberates.
• How medical costs already processed through health insurance get settled — how the settlement under Article 90(1) applies to your case needs individual confirmation.
• When the limitation period for your benefit starts running — Article 112 sets only the periods, not the starting point.

If treatment drags on, your period of stay can run out first. A route for changing residency status on the grounds of industrial accident treatment is described in official guidance, but permission is decided case by case, so we won't rule on whether it's possible here. Changing residency status, immigration notifications, and whether it counts toward your workplace-change limit are all things to check at ☎1345. The workplace change procedure itself is covered separately in Changing Workplaces on an E-9 Visa, and rights when you have no residency status are covered in Wage and Industrial Accident Rights for Undocumented Workers.

If you're not sure which window to ask about what, start with A Complete Guide to Official Help Hotlines for Foreigners.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1. My company says it "won't process the industrial accident claim." Does that mean I can't file? You can file. Article 36(2) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that insurance benefits are paid upon the claim of the beneficiary, so the person who files is the injured worker. The requirement to attach employer confirmation documents to the medical care benefit application was deleted by Ministry of Employment and Labor Ordinance No. 204 effective January 1, 2018, and today Article 20(2) of the Enforcement Rules has COMWEL notify the employer and hear its opinion. An employer who dismisses you or treats you disadvantageously because you filed faces imprisonment of up to 2 years or a criminal fine of up to 20,000,000 KRW (violation of Article 111-2 of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act; the penalty is in Article 127(3)3 of the same Act). Ask ☎1588-0075 about how to file.

Q2. My company says it never enrolled in industrial accident insurance. They also say farms aren't covered in the first place. Those are two different stories. If it is a covered business and the accident happened during a period when the establishment report was neglected, COMWEL can pay the benefits under Article 26(1) of the Premium Collection Act and then collect all or part of that amount from the employer. On the other hand, the proviso to Article 6 of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act and Article 2(1)6 of the Enforcement Decree exclude businesses in agriculture, forestry (excluding logging), fishing, and hunting that are run by a non-corporate operator and regularly employ fewer than five workers. Even where coverage is excluded, though, the employer can enroll voluntarily with COMWEL's approval (Premium Collection Act, Article 5(4)), and accident compensation under the Labor Standards Act still remains. Check at ☎1588-0075 which side your workplace falls on.

Q3. I already settled with the company and took the money. Can I still not file? Settling doesn't in itself strip you of the right to file. However, Article 80(3) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act provides that where you receive money or goods equivalent to insurance benefits under the Civil Act or other statutes for the same cause, insurance benefits are not paid up to the limit of the amount converted by the method prescribed by Presidential Decree, and paragraph (2) of the same article provides that where insurance benefits are received, liability for damages is exempted up to that amount. In short, you can file, and the amount you already received may be adjusted. The conversion method isn't covered in this article, so bring your settlement agreement and check with ☎1588-0075.

Q4. I received a disapproval notice. What can I do? There are a request for examination and a request for reexamination. Within 90 days from the date you learned of the decision, file a request for examination with COMWEL (Article 103(2) and (3)), and if you're not satisfied with that decision, file a request for reexamination with the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Reexamination Committee within another 90 days (Article 106(1) and (3)). If the decision went through deliberation by the Occupational Disease Determination Committee, you can skip the request for examination and go straight to a request for reexamination (proviso to Article 106(1)). You cannot file an administrative appeal under the Administrative Appeals Act (Article 103(5)). The 90 days is written only inside the notice, so photograph it starting with the date you received it.

Q5. My period of stay ends before my treatment does. What happens if I go back to my home country? The right to receive insurance benefits is not extinguished by the worker's retirement or departure from the job (Article 88(1) of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act). The limitation period is 3 years, and 5 years for disability benefits, survivors' benefits, funeral expenses, the pneumoconiosis compensation annuity, and the pneumoconiosis survivors' annuity (Article 112(1)). That said, how payment actually works once you have left the country, and whether you can change your residency status on the grounds of industrial accident treatment, are areas where we can't give you a definitive answer. Ask ☎1588-0075 about receiving benefits and ☎1345 about residency status, and if you can, check with both before you leave the country.