This study aims to diagnose the adequacy of Korea’s current welfare system as a social safety net for the coming era of aged society. For this purpose, we investigated what constitute an appropriate long-term welfare strategy and what it takes to make one. Our critical evaluations found that the existing welfare plans remain unsupported by evidence. We also reviewed changes in social protection policies across European welfare states, focusing on the effect of fiscal consolidation in the UK, Sweden, and Germany. After a thorough examination on the current state of welfare system in Korea, the social adequacy of Korea’s social insurance-oriented welfare structure was inspected based on the distributional impact of the National Health Insurance and the National Pension Scheme. Our micro-simulation results showed that the current welfare structure needs to be adjusted to give more protection for precarious workers who are highly unlikely to be covered by the social insurance system, as the population ageing may cause the economy to slow down and job security to wither.