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Korea emergency numbers: who to call when something goes wrong
Almost nothing that goes wrong on a trip to Korea is a 112 emergency. It is a lost bag, a pharmacy that cannot understand you, a hotel dispute, a passport left in a taxi. There is a Korea emergency number for exactly that, it answers in English at three in the morning, and most visitors have never heard of it.
The four numbers, and which one you actually need
Save these before you fly. They work from any phone, anywhere in the country, with no area code.
1330 is the one nobody tells you about
The Korea Travel Hotline is run by the Korea Tourism Organization, it is free, and English is staffed 24 hours a day, every day. Korean, Japanese and Chinese are the same. Vietnamese, Thai and Malay/Indonesian run shorter hours, roughly office hours into the evening.
What makes it worth a place in your phone is not the tourist information. It is that 1330 will interpret for you on a live three-way call.
You are in a pharmacy and cannot explain the symptom. You call 1330, tell them what you need, and hand the phone to the pharmacist. Same with a taxi driver who has misunderstood the destination, a landlord, a hotel that will not release your luggage, a restaurant dispute. This service exists specifically so that not speaking Korean stops being the problem.
Late at night this matters more, not less. Most tourist information desks close. 1330 does not, and it is the only English line running at 3am that will talk to a Korean stranger on your behalf.
You can also reach it from outside Korea on +82-2-1330, which is useful before you fly.
119 is the ambulance. There is no other number.
This trips people up because many countries separate them. In Korea, fire and medical both go to 119, and 119 dispatches the ambulance. Chest pain, a bad fall, an allergic reaction, someone unconscious: 119.
Two things worth knowing before you need them.
Ambulance dispatch is free. Treatment is not. Without Korean national health insurance you pay the full cost of whatever happens at the hospital. This is the single strongest argument for travel insurance on a Korea trip, and the reason to buy it before you go rather than after something happens.
You can also just walk in. The emergency department is marked 응급실, pronounced eung-geup-sil. Large hospitals have them and they will treat you before sorting out how you pay.
What about 1339?
Skip it. A lot of travel guides list 1339 as a medical emergency line, and that is out of date. It is now the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's call centre, and it handles infectious disease questions, travel vaccinations and disease reporting. It is a good number if you want to ask whether you need a particular vaccination. It is the wrong number if someone is having a heart attack.
For a medical emergency, 119. For a medical question that is not an emergency, 1330 will point you at an English-speaking clinic.
Reaching your embassy
Korea hosts around 299 foreign missions, counting embassies, consulates and international organisation offices. Rather than reproduce a list here that will quietly go stale, use the source the Korean government keeps current:
Guide for Foreign Missions in Korea — the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directory, in English, with the address, phone and email for every mission in the country.
There is also a Korean-language address book with the same data, sorted by country name, which is sometimes faster to scan.
Two habits worth forming. Before you fly, find your embassy's entry and save the after-hours emergency number separately from the switchboard, because they are usually different and the switchboard is useless at 2am. And note that a consulate is not always in Seoul. Several countries have a consulate in Busan that will be far closer if that is where you are.
What an embassy will actually do
This is the part that catches people out, and it is worth reading before you need it rather than while you are upset.
They will replace a lost or stolen passport. This is the main thing embassies do for travellers, and they are good at it. Expect to need a police report first, which means going to a police station and asking for one, or calling 112 and being directed. Bring photos and whatever identification you still have. Some embassies issue an emergency travel document good only for the journey home.
They will contact your family, help you find a local lawyer or an English-speaking doctor, and visit you if you are arrested or hospitalised.
They will not pay for anything. Not your hotel, not your flight home, not your hospital bill, not bail. Some can arrange an emergency loan against a signed repayment, and the conditions are strict.
They cannot get you out of a Korean legal problem. They will make sure you are treated the same as anyone else under Korean law and that you have access to a lawyer. They cannot make a charge go away, and being a foreign visitor is not a defence.
They will not act as a general translation service. That is 1330's job, and 1330 is better at it and open longer.
The one to save that is not a phone number
Install the Emergency Ready App, published by Korea's Ministry of the Interior and Safety and available in English on both stores. Korea sends loud nationwide alerts for weather, air quality and civil emergencies, and they arrive in Korean. The app translates them, and it can place an emergency call while sharing your GPS location, which solves the hardest part of any emergency call: saying where you are.
If you want the wider set of apps worth having before you land, that is its own guide.
Quick answers: emergency numbers in Korea
What is the emergency number in Korea?
119 for fire and medical emergencies, including the ambulance, and 112 for police. Both work from any phone with no area code. For anything that needs an English speaker, 1330 is the Korea Travel Hotline and will interpret on a live three-way call.
What is 1330 in Korea?
The Korea Tourism Organization's free travel hotline. English is staffed 24 hours a day, every day, and its most useful feature is interpreting between you and a pharmacist, a taxi driver or a hotel on a three-way call. From outside Korea it is +82-2-1330.
Is 1339 a medical emergency number in Korea?
No longer. 1339 is now the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's call centre for infectious disease and vaccination questions. For a medical emergency call 119; for a non-urgent medical question, 1330 will point you to an English-speaking clinic.
Will my embassy pay my hospital bill in Korea?
No. Embassies replace lost or stolen passports, contact family, help find a lawyer or an English-speaking doctor and visit you if you are arrested or hospitalised. They do not pay hotel, flight, hospital or bail costs, and cannot make a Korean legal problem go away.
Figures on this page come from Korea Tourism Organization 1330, Immigration Contact Center 1345, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KDCA 1339 call centre, including the 1330 and 1345 operating-hours table, Gyeongnam province 1330 language-hours listing, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guide for Foreign Missions in Korea, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, emergency numbers in Korea. Checked against the published source on the date below.
LAST VERIFIED 23 AUGUST 2026