On June 15, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety expanded the Emergency Ready App, its disaster-safety app for foreign residents, from three supported languages to 22. Russian, Nepali, Arabic and others were added to the existing English, Chinese and Japanese. The ministry said the overhaul means about 97% of the roughly 2.87 million foreign residents in Korea can now receive disaster and safety information in the language they use.
As of Sept. 21, three months after the overhaul, the Safety Stepping Stone guide page on the ministry's website still tells users that installing the app lets them check disaster and safety information in English, Chinese and Japanese. The Suwon City website carries the same wording.
The same description has made its way into private information. Seoulstart, a living-information website for foreign residents, said its disaster-alert guide updated in August had been checked against 13 primary sources, yet it listed the app's information languages as English, Chinese and Japanese. The source it cited was the ministry's website.
Automatic disaster alerts are still in Korean
The 97% figure refers to the share of people who could receive information if they install the app. The Emergency Ready App's multilingual service works only after users download it and set their language.
Disaster alerts received automatically on phones without the app are written in Korean by default. Since February 2024, the ministry has added English only for key words such as the type of disaster — for example "Earthquake" or "Heavy rain" — and only on critical and emergency alerts that sound an alarm. Safety guidance messages, which carry no alarm, do not even include that.
At the time, the ministry said it did not send the full text bilingually because of the short character limit on alert messages and complaints about too many alerts. In February 2025, the ministry announced at a meeting of its disaster-alert broadcasting council that it would raise the character limit from 90 to 157, pilot the change in some local governments that year and expand it nationwide this year. The character limit is being eased, but foreign-language content in automatic alerts remains limited to a few English key words.
1345 use varies widely by language
Korea Multicultural News analyzed consultation data for the Immigration Contact Center (1345), published by the Ministry of Justice on the Public Data Portal. Operated by the Ministry of Justice under the Framework Act on Treatment of Foreigners Residing in the Republic of Korea, 1345 provides counseling in 20 languages including Korean. It is not a disaster-specific service, but it is public data that shows how much a multilingual public service is actually used, language by language.
In 2025, calls connected to 1345 counselors totaled 3,070,601. We compared these with the ministry's year-end figures for foreign residents by nationality.
Vietnamese-language consultations numbered 179,163, or one for every 1.9 of the 337,183 Vietnamese nationals residing in Korea. Chinese-language consultations numbered 282,816, one for every 3.5 of 980,670 Chinese nationals. Thai-language consultations numbered only 6,427, one for every 26.4 of 169,848 Thai nationals. Thailand ranks fourth among foreign residents by nationality, but its per-person use of the service was about one-fourteenth that of Vietnam.
Compared with 2024, consultations rose sharply in Urdu (82.7%), Khmer (67.7%), Sinhala (63.5%), Burmese (55.5%) and Nepali (52.4%). Russian fell 43.6% and Chinese 18.6%, while Thai also declined 1.5%.
These figures cannot be read directly as a measure of information access by language. Consultation numbers depend on the mix of visa statuses, demand for services and length of stay. Chinese nationals also include ethnic Korean Chinese who speak Korean. The data does not explain why Russian and Chinese consultations fell.
Thai interpretation exists, but people feel it doesn't
A, a Thai national interviewed by Korea Multicultural News (name withheld), has worked in interpretation and translation at a multicultural support organization. A said they learned about 1345 through that work. According to A, most Thai people living in Korea find it burdensome to call government offices, and the reason is language. Many feel that Thai interpretation is hard to come by, A said.
1345 provides counseling in Thai. In February 2023, Thailand's Department of Consular Affairs, when advising Thai nationals staying in Korea without legal status to leave voluntarily, listed 1345 as a contact point and said Thai interpretation was available.
Similar accounts appear in Thai media. Thai broadcaster Ch3, reporting on an agent who makes reporting calls to Korean immigration authorities on behalf of others, relayed the agent's remark that Thai people in Korea are reluctant to call 1345 themselves for fear they will not be understood.
Their pattern of stay also differs. According to the Ministry of Justice's monthly immigration statistics, 156,798 Thai nationals were staying in Korea at the end of July this year, and 70.4% of them, or 110,382, were short-term sojourners. In the most recent data published by nationality, as of the end of October 2024, the Seoul Immigration Office said 74% of the 190,171 Thai nationals in Korea, or 140,122 people, were undocumented. The total number of undocumented foreign residents stood at 344,999 at the end of July this year, down 7.8% from a year earlier.
A field study published in 2023 by Thai outlet The101.world pointed to insufficient quotas under Korea's Employment Permit System (EPS) and employment practices that tolerate irregular hiring as causes of undocumented stays among Thai nationals in Korea.
Still, the reason A gave was not visa status but language.
One number publicized, reports rose sixfold
An example of how publicity changes use can be found within 1345 itself. On May 27, the Ministry of Justice set up a dedicated line within 1345 for reporting human-rights violations against foreigners. Callers who dial 1345 and press 1 are connected directly to counselors in 20 languages.
According to the ministry, human-rights violation reports rose from a monthly average of 22 before the line was introduced to a monthly average of 142 afterward — more than a sixfold increase.
Japan's 'Easy Japanese'
After surveys following the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake found that foreign residents had struggled to understand information about shelters and daily life, Japan introduced "Easy Japanese" (yasashii nihongo). Instead of adding more translations, it rewrites the original text in simpler words — for example, "aftershock" becomes "an earthquake that comes later," and "water truck" becomes "a car carrying water."
Korea's foreign resident population reached 2,783,247 at the end of last year, up 5.0% in a year, and passed 2.9 million at the end of July this year, reaching 2,903,463. Its mix of nationalities continues to diversify.
Fix the government guidance first
The Emergency Ready App in 22 languages and 1345 counseling in 20 languages are already in operation. As the 1345 human-rights line shows, services that people do not know about do not get used.
The first thing that can be done now is to correct government website guidance to reflect the overhaul. Next, services need to be publicized through the native-language media and communities where migrants actually get their information. For cases like Thai speakers, who believe interpretation is unavailable even though it exists, the starting point is simply letting them know they can receive counseling in Thai.
[AD] Korea Press Foundation (한국언론진흥재단)
