South Korea to develop AI translation for 112 emergency service — Korea Herald

In South Korea, the National Police Agency is developing a new AI-powered 112 emergency service system that will automatically identify the caller’s language and translate the conversation with a Korean-speaking operator in real time. The system will support English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai.

As Korea Herald reports, the need for police interpreters is growing. In 2025, the 112 number received 21,252 calls in foreign languages — more than twice as many as the 10,348 such calls in 2024. In the first eight months of 2026, the service received another 21,012 foreign-language calls, nearly matching the total for the entire previous year.

Interpreters for calls and interrogations

Currently, 112 centers have in-house interpreters for English and Chinese. For calls in other languages, police use external translation services.

Translation is also needed during interrogations at police stations, where law enforcement officers rely on civilian interpreters. They usually have other primary jobs and arrive for interrogations at the police’s request. As of September, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency had 629 such interpreters: 198 worked with Chinese, 97 with English and another 64 with Vietnamese.

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Problems during detentions

It is particularly important to ensure accurate communication directly during detention, when police officers must explain the reasons for it and the right to a lawyer. However, it is not always possible to quickly find an interpreter on site.

Law enforcement officers use smartphone apps and translation devices, but such tools are not available in all regions. Gyeonggi Provincial Police, in particular, created an app as early as 2011 that plays warnings about the rights of a detained person in text and audio formats in the selected language.

The information plan for the new 112 system was completed in August. Development is planned to be completed by the end of 2027, with modernization to take place in 2028 and 2029. The proposed project budget for 2027 is 13.6 billion won, or about $10.3 million; total costs over three years are estimated at 45.6 billion won. Experts, however, advise having AI translations checked by humans due to the risk of errors and technical limitations.