Achieving the goal of expanding essential health care (EHC) requires fostering a shared understanding through extensive communication with stakeholders and inclusive feedback gathering, while considering the current socio-political and cultural context. The majority of the public, both as beneficiaries of health care policy and as stakeholders, supports a greater state role in ensuring better access to expanded EHC. However, there is a lack of consensus on what precisely counts as EHC. Efforts to advance EHC should proceed based on clear, policy-oriented definitions, a well-defined scope for EHC areas as appropriate to the Korean context, and broad agreement on related policy priorities.