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For the emergency dispatchers staffing Seoul’s 119 hotline — Korea’s equivalent of 911 — every second counts. Yet over the past year, a handful of individuals treated the city’s critical lifeline for fires, accidents, and medical emergencies as a personal bulletin board, a late-night cab service, and a sounding board for drunken rants.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Friday that it had filed criminal complaints against five habitual callers who collectively flooded the 119 emergency dispatch center with 8,710 non-emergency calls and text messages between September 2025 and August 2026.

The barrage intensified sharply over the summer. Between June and August alone, the five individuals accounted for 4,034 separate contacts — an average of more than 40 disruptions a day. Among the worst offenders, one individual placed 2,661 phone calls, while another sent 2,886 text messages.

According to the Seoul Emergency Operations Center, the nature of the contacts ranged from perplexing to blatantly disruptive. Dispatchers fielded silent calls where nobody spoke on the line, incoherent rambling, requests from intoxicated callers asking for a ride home, and a steady stream of text messages containing random, unrelated photographs.

While Korea has long imposed fines for malicious false alarms — such as reporting fake fires or crimes — authorities are increasingly turning to criminal obstruction-of-justice charges to curb chronic nuisance callers who tie up phone lines without technically reporting a fabricated emergency.

Before pursuing legal action, the center conducted a rigorous review of the top 10 non-emergency callers from the past three months, analyzing the frequency, patterns, and content of their contacts alongside the Seoul Fire and Disaster Headquarters’ judicial police team. Officials were careful to filter out vulnerable residents, exempting elderly citizens calling with minor daily grievances as well as cases suspected of stemming from smartphone malfunctions.

The remaining targets were sent multiple warning text messages urging them to stop. When five of the individuals ignored the warnings and continued their barrage, the city moved forward with criminal referrals.

“The 119 Emergency Operations Center is the starting point for emergency response that protects the lives and safety of our citizens, so its normal operations must never be disrupted by repetitive calls,” said Hong Young-geun, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters, urging the public to help foster a responsible emergency-reporting culture.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.