Take note of this if you are an expatriate living in the southwestern province of Jeollabuk-do (North Jeolla Province).

The fire department in the province has launched an emergency hotline service designed to help foreigners with medical and other emergency situations.

The service, named “Help Me 119 Service” works like this.
 
If you call 119 and speak a foreign language, your call will be immediately transferred to the Before Babel Brigade (BBB) center where volunteers provide free interpreting services to non-Korean speakers, and then medics or a rescue team will be dispatched to help you.

It doesn't always have to be an emergency when you call the number. You can of course get help in cases of fire, injury and natural disaster but also you can ask for help to find locations, get numbers and etc.

BBB (Phone: 1588-5644), established back in 2002, provides translations service in 16 languages: English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian Russian, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Thai, Vietnamese and Malay-Indonesian.

By Han Aran
Korea.net Staff Writer