Seoul's Safety App Most Foreign Residents Have Never Opened

8 min read

You're walking back from a late shift, a last-minute meetup, or just the subway station after dark, and your phone is the only thing in your pocket that could call for help. Most foreign residents and expats in Korea have 112 saved for emergencies and little else between "fine" and "dial the police." Seoul has had a free answer to that gap for years — it just never made it onto most newcomers' phones, because almost nobody tells you it exists.

That answer is 안심이 (Anshim-i), Seoul's own personal-safety app, and as of March 2025 it does noticeably more than it used to.

Not the disaster app — a different one

Korea actually runs two apps that sound similar and do completely different jobs, and mixing them up is the first mistake.

Two different apps: Emergency Ready App covers nationwide disaster alerts like typhoons and earthquakes in 22 languages, while Anshim-i is Seoul's own personal crime and safety app, for walking home, riding a taxi, or an emergency right now Emergency Ready App Nationwide disaster alerts Typhoons, earthquakes — 22 languages Anshim-i (안심이) Seoul's personal safety app Walking home, a taxi, right now This guide is about the second one For the first, see our disaster-alert guide below
Same city, two different apps, two different jobs.

If you want the disaster-alert side of things — typhoons, earthquakes, the June 2026 language update — see our guide to Korea's emergency alert system. Anshim-i is narrower and more personal: it exists for the walk home, the taxi ride, the moment something feels wrong right now.

What Anshim-i actually does

The app runs through the Seoul Metropolitan Government and connects to roughly 110,000 CCTV cameras across the city via district control centers. Four core services have been there for years; a fifth was added in March 2025.

Five Anshim-i services: Emergency Report dispatches police after a shake or button press, Return-Home Monitoring tracks a walk and messages a guardian, Safe Route shows the nearest lit and camera-covered path, Safe Friend lets you share your live location by QR code, and Anshim Video, added March 2025, turns on your phone camera alongside the three nearest CCTVs Emergency report Shake phone or press the button — police dispatched Return-home monitoring Set your destination — control center tracks the walk Safe route Shows the nearest lit, camera-covered path Safe friend Share live location by QR code or ID Anshim Video — added March 2025 Phone camera plus 3 nearest CCTVs, watched live by the district center Safe taxi & the Help Me bell Boarding/drop-off shared automatically; a portable device does the same by press
Six years of features, stacked onto one free app.

Anshim Video, the newest piece, is the one worth knowing about even if you never open the rest of the app. Start it and your phone's flash turns on automatically while it records; wherever CCTV is nearby, the district control center watches the three closest cameras alongside your own phone's footage in real time, and can dispatch police immediately if something looks wrong. Seoul added it after a 2023 assault on a hiking trail around Gwanak Mountain happened at a spot with no camera coverage — the kind of blind spot a phone can cover that a fixed CCTV network can't.

The Safe Taxi feature works without you doing anything once it's set up: get in a registered Seoul taxi, and your boarding time, drop-off time and the vehicle's details go to the district control center and your chosen contact automatically. The Help Me (헬프미) bell is a separate physical device — press it, and it sends a crime report plus your location straight to five contacts you've set in advance; Seoul had distributed 50,000 of them as of April 2025, with another 100,000 planned that year.

The one that catches people Return-Home Monitoring only tracks you inside Seoul's own CCTV network — step outside the city limits mid-walk and the live tracking stops working, even though the app itself still runs. It's a Seoul service, not a national one.

It's been in English since 2022

Seoul added English, Chinese and Japanese to Anshim-i on October 1, 2022, specifically because the city's foreign-resident population had grown roughly 31% over the prior decade and officials were seeing more crime reports involving foreigners who couldn't navigate a Korean-only safety tool. That multilingual layer is still a funded, running part of the city's foreign-resident support — Seoul lists "외국인주민 안심귀가 지원(안심이 앱)," support for foreign residents' safe return home through the Anshim-i app, as an active 2026 budget line in the joint ministries' own 2026 외국인정책 시행계획 (2026 Foreign Policy Implementation Plan).

  • 110,000CCTVs linked to the app across Seoul
  • Oct 2022Since when English, Chinese and Japanese have been supported
  • Mar 2025When Anshim Video and a redesigned home screen launched
  • FreeNo cost to download, register, or use any feature

The app's multilingual version exists partly because Seoul's own volunteer feedback program for foreign residents asked for it — a story worth its own read in our guide to Seoul's five foreign-resident support systems, which covers that program in full.

Setting it up

Four steps to set up Anshim-i: download the app, verify with your phone number or Kakao account, set your language in settings, and add an emergency contact before you need one Download it Search "Seoul Ansimi" Verify Phone number or Kakao Set language English, Chinese, Japanese Add a contact Before you need one
Takes about three minutes. Do it tonight, not on the night you need it.

Search "Seoul Ansimi" or "안심이" on the App Store, Google Play or the OneStore, and install the official Seoul Metropolitan Government app — not a lookalike. Verify with mobile phone authentication or a Kakao account, pick your language in settings, and register at least one emergency contact before you ever walk a route with it. If you only ever use one feature, Return-Home Monitoring is the one worth trying once on a familiar walk, so the layout is familiar before it matters.

What we see at Soo House

Soo House connects expats and foreign residents in Korea with paid campaigns, local classes and community meetups, and a decent share of those run into the evening — a K-pop dance class, a content-editing workshop, a Halloween party that doesn't wrap until well after dark. The question that comes up afterward, almost always from a member walking home alone for the first time in a new neighborhood, isn't "is Seoul safe" — most members already feel it is — it's "what do I actually do if something feels off on the way back." We'd rather point people to a real tool with a real control center behind it than let that question sit unanswered until the next meetup.

Soo, what? A safety net that only works in Korean isn't much of a net for someone who can't read Korean fast under stress — which is exactly the gap Seoul closed for Anshim-i in 2022, and the reason it's worth the three minutes to set up before, not during, the walk home.

Your next hop: download Anshim-i tonight, set your language, and add one emergency contact — not after the first night it would have helped.

Useful contacts

  • Anshim-i (안심이) — search "Seoul Ansimi" on the App Store, Google Play or OneStore; free, run by the Seoul Metropolitan Government
  • 112 — police, nationwide, can connect an interpreter mid-call
  • 119 — fire and ambulance, nationwide
  • 1577-1366 — Danuri Call Center, 24/7 multilingual support for family and personal-safety crises

For Korea's separate disaster-alert system, see our guide to emergency alerts for foreign residents. For Seoul's other support programs for foreign residents, including the volunteer group that asked for Anshim-i's foreign-language version, see our guide to Seoul's five support systems.

Checked in October 2026. Anshim-i's current feature set, the ~110,000 linked CCTVs, and the March 17, 2025 Anshim Video relaunch (prompted by a 2023 assault near an uncovered stretch of the Gwanak Mountain trail) are drawn from Newsis's report on the city's own announcement. The Safe Taxi feature and the Help Me bell's 50,000-distributed/100,000-planned 2025 figures are drawn from the Korea Herald's April 13, 2025 safety guide for Seoul residents, reported by Yoon Min-sik; those bell figures are current as of that date and likely higher by now — confirm with the Seoul Metropolitan Government before relying on them. The October 1, 2022 launch of English, Chinese and Japanese support, and the population and crime-report figures behind it, are drawn from contemporaneous Korean news coverage of the city's own announcement. The app's continued listing as a funded 2026 program for Seoul under "외국인주민 안심귀가 지원(안심이 앱)" is drawn from the 2026 외국인정책 시행계획 (지방자치단체), the joint-ministries' 2026 Foreign Policy Implementation Plan for local governments, issued April 2026. The app's official download and setup instructions are drawn from its own English information page. Features, coverage and distribution figures change — confirm anything time-sensitive in the app itself or with the Seoul Metropolitan Government before relying on it.

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