1. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Minister of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of Slovenia Anja Kopač Mrak formally signed the Republic of Korea-Republic of Slovenia agreement on social security at the Foreign Ministry on February 20.

o The agreement will enter into force after necessary procedures in both countries, including parliamentary approval, are completed.

2. The ROK-Slovenia social security agreement, signed today, mainly calls for exempting the two countries’ dispatched workers and self-employed people from making pension contributions in their host country for the first five years of their stay (exemption period is extendable, if agreed), as well as aggregating the contribution periods in their home and host countries.

o The agreement, when brought into force, is expected to not only ease pension burdens of Korean workers dispatched to Slovenia and self-employed people in the country by exempting them from paying pension insurance premiums in Slovenia, but also improve their pension entitlements through the aggregation of the contribution periods in the two countries.

o In particular, the agreement also has a provision on the aggregation of the contribution period in a third country, which makes it possible for each country to aggregate the contribution period in a third country with which it concluded a social security agreement containing the provision, in case workers do not meet pension eligibility requirements even when their contribution periods in the ROK and Slovenia are aggregated. This is expected to further improve Korean workers’ pension entitlements.

3. The ROK government will continue to work to conclude social security agreements with more countries in order to relieve Korean companies and workers overseas of double pension payments, and to improve their pension entitlements through the aggregation of the contribution periods.

※ The ROK has concluded social security agreements with a total of 35 countries, including Slovenia. Among them, agreements with 32 countries entered into force (as of February 2018).

* unofficial translation