By Israa Mohamed

Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese expats in the country from November can receive emergency text messages on their cell phones in their native languages.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety on Aug. 25 said its Emergency Ready App will provide service in five languages with the addition of the three in addition to English and Chinese.

This means that some 70% of the estimated 2.5 million expats in the country as of last year can receive such messages in their mother tongues.

The ministry will officially launch the service after two months of pilot operations.

The app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store. A user simply selects the desired language from the Settings menu at the bottom of the home screen and sets the region to receive notification of an emergency.

The app provides 36 types of safety data including text messages on disasters, national action guidelines and shelter information. Its text-to-speech service reads aloud disaster text messages for the convenience of elderly expats.

ess8@korea.kr