Vietnamese is used in the emergency warning system in Korea.

On August 26, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety of South Korea (MOIS) announced that emergency alerts sent via the Emergency Ready application will be available in five different languages, including Vietnamese.

Previously, the app sent official emergency alerts in English and Chinese. Starting August 26, it will begin sending alerts in Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese.

Emergency Ready is an application managed by MOIS that provides multilingual support for 36 emergency services, including emergency alerts, safety instructions, information about embassies, fire stations and police stations, as well as the location of civil defense shelters.

With five different languages ​​available for Emergency Ready, the ministry expects more than 1.7 million people to benefit from the new service.

MOIS added that emergency alerts will be available in text and audio format for those who have difficulty reading warning messages through screens.

MOIS will also undergo a 2-month trial period, before officially starting the service, and will make changes based on user feedback.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Justice, as of 2023, South Korea has about 2.5 million residents of foreign origin, of which about 220,000 speak English, 980,000 speak Chinese, 270,000 speak Vietnamese, 200,000 speak Thai and 60,000 speak Japanese.

“The ministry has decided to expand emergency alert services in more languages ​​so that people, not just Koreans, will not have difficulty accessing information related to emergencies,” said MOIS Minister Lee Sang-min.

In addition to the Emergency Ready app, MOIS has also been incorporating English keywords into emergency alert messages since February, including alert messages sent to users within a certain radius of emergency situations.