hankyoreh

So Sung-uk and Kim Yong-min in May 2023. (courtesy of Amnesty International Korea) 

Korea’s Supreme Court has confirmed a lower court’s ruling that refusing to recognize a same-sex spouse as a dependent for state health insurance coverage represents discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This is the first Supreme Court ruling that recognizes the rights of same-sex couples in connection with a social security program.

On Thursday, the full panel of the Supreme Court, with Justice Kim Seon-soo presiding, dismissed an appeal of a high court’s ruling that ordered the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) to recognize So Sung-uk as a dependent of his same-sex spouse in health insurance enrollment. So had sued the NHIS after it refused to cover him under his spouse’s insurance payments.

The Supreme Court noted that “granting dependent status to common-law spouses of the opposite sex but denying that status for common-law spouses of the same sex, and thus treating the two groups differently, fundamentally represents discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation for otherwise identical groups.”

“The individual enrolled in health insurance through his job and his same-sex partner are part of an economically integrated relationship that goes beyond mere cohabitation and essentially amounts to marriage. That relationship is no different from that between common-law spouses of the opposite sex, who are allowed to claim dependency.”

So Sung-uk left his job after marrying Kim Yong-min, who is also a man, in 2019. Kim, who is enrolled in Korea’s national health insurance scheme through his job, registered So as a dependent. When that arrangement was disclosed through reporting by the Hankyoreh 21 magazine, the NHIS unilaterally canceled So’s status as a dependent and reenrolled So independently, which required him to pay his own insurance premiums.

So Sung-uk and Kim Yong-min smile and shed tears outside the courthouse on July 18, 2024, after emerging victorious in a Supreme Court case on same-sex couples' eligibility for spousal dependent status in state health insurance. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh)

In January 2022, a district court ruled against So, declining to “recognize special circumstances for expanding the concept of common-law marriage to same-sex relationships in the area of health insurance.” But a high court sided with So in February 2023 on the grounds that the NHIS’ treatment represented “discrimination that violates the principle of equality.”

“Refusing to recognize the relationship of two people who live together and care for each other in connection with a basic social security program, and not the traditional family law system, is an act of discrimination that infringes upon the value and dignity of human beings, the right to the pursuit of happiness, the right to privacy and the right to equality before the law,” the court said, adding that “the interpretation of ‘spouse’ in terms of common law or family law and the potential expansion of its scope are questions that can certainly be discussed in another context.”

Justices Lee Dong-won, Roh Tae-ak, Oh Suk-joon and Kwon Young-joon said in a concurring opinion that while they agreed that the appeal should be dismissed on procedural grounds, the NHIS’ behavior “cannot be seen as discrimination because same-sex partners cannot be regarded as equivalent to common-law spouses.”

“If this violates the principle of equality, it ought to be corrected through legislation or through a petition to the Constitutional Court,” the justices said in the concurring opinion.

By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter

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