Foreign-language emergency calls more than double in Korea

As Korea experiences a record surge in international tourism, police forces are grappling with a growing need for interpretation services, particularly for emergency calls and at crime scenes. However, budget limitations have made it difficult to hire extra professional interpreters for languages beyond English and Chinese, straining officers who often face language barriers, especially at crime scenes when interpreters are scarce and hard to come by quickly.

Tourism to Korea surged 21.5 percent year-over-year to 17.11 million visitors in the first nine months of the current year, compared to 14.08 million in 2025, amplifying the demand for police interpretation services. According to records submitted by the National Police Agency to Rep. Park Ju-min of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, police handled 21,252 emergency calls in foreign languages last year, nearly twice as many as the 10,348 recorded in 2024.

The trend has persisted into this year, with 21,012 foreign-language calls logged through August, almost matching the entire calls logged in the previous year. Despite ongoing pleas for additional interpreters, efforts to meet the rising demand have been hampered by financial constraints.