South Korea to mandate insurance for delivery riders starting Wednesday

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Sunday it will enforce revised enforcement decrees and rules under the Living Logistics Service Industry Development Act starting Wednesday, mandating that delivery workers obtain commercial-use insurance for their motorcycles as part of efforts to establish a safer delivery culture.

The primary aim of the revision is to protect both delivery workers and the public from accidents involving motorcycle deliveries and to strengthen practical compensation support when accidents occur. The core objective is to structurally block uninsured delivery operations and create a safer environment for riders and pedestrians alike.

The revised rules define the scope of information that relevant agencies may be asked to provide in order to build and operate an information system capable of verifying whether workers have obtained insurance. The system will be able to request data including motorcycle registration filings and the status, coverage and scope of insurance or mutual aid subscriptions. Delivery businesses are expected to benefit from reduced administrative burdens when verifying workers' insurance status, allowing for more stable workforce management.

In addition, the required coverage for current and prospective delivery workers is clarified as unlimited personal liability for victims and property damage up to 20 million won. The ministry said the rules will enable prompt and adequate compensation for victims in the event of an accident, while fundamentally shielding workers from the risk of financial ruin due to large liability claims.

The revisions also spell out in detail how delivery businesses must verify workers' insurance status and how often. Businesses will be required to reconfirm coverage before a policy expires and to check every three months when a policy term is six months or longer.

The ministry said the measures will bring uniformity to administrative procedures, continuously block uninsured delivery operations and dramatically improve the effectiveness of the regime.

Workers who have not obtained insurance will be barred from signing employment or delivery consignment contracts with delivery businesses, and existing contracts will be terminated, strengthening enforcement of the system.

To ease the insurance premium burden on workers during the transition, the ministry plans to expand discount rates under special policy riders in the second half of this year.

Park Jae-soon, director general of the ministry's transport and logistics bureau, said the revised decrees and rules establish "the minimum institutional safeguards needed to give both delivery workers and the public peace of mind." He added that the ministry would continue working to build "a more responsible and safer delivery environment where workers can do their jobs safely and citizens can walk the streets without worry."

Meanwhile, no precise official count exists for the number of platform-based delivery workers in South Korea. The Ministry of Employment and Labor said its probe found the figure grew sharply from 660,000 in 2021 to 800,000 the following year and 880,000 in 2023, but the survey data were not accurate enough to receive official national statistics approval.