Who to Call in Korea When You Don't Know Who to Call

You're standing at a bank counter, or a hospital reception desk, or reading a letter from the district office, and nobody around you speaks a language you understand. Your Korean friend isn't picking up. Google Translate is doing its best with a scanned government form. What you actually need is a phone number — but which one?

Korea runs several free, multilingual phone lines built exactly for this moment, and almost nobody outside them knows they all exist, let alone which one fits which problem. This guide is that map.

Four numbers, four different jobs

None of these cost money to call, and none of them require you to already speak Korean well enough to explain your situation before you get help.

1345 — the one for anything immigration-related

1345 is the Immigration Contact Centre, run by the Ministry of Justice's Korea Immigration Service. Dial 1345 from inside Korea, or +82-1345 from abroad. Follow the ARS prompt, press the number for your language, then press the star key to connect.

It covers visa extensions, Residence Card (ARC) questions, permanent residency and naturalization procedures, and family invitation processes — the paperwork side of living here, not general daily-life questions.

• 20Languages available through 1345
• 9am–10pmWeekday hours; after 6pm only Korean, English and Chinese
• FreeNo charge to call, from inside or outside Korea

Because the after-6pm window narrows to three languages, calling earlier in the day is worth planning around if your language isn't one of those three.

BBB Korea — interpretation for literally anything else

BBB Korea is a volunteer interpretation service, not a government office, and that's exactly what makes it different from 1345: it doesn't care what the topic is. Standing at a pharmacy counter, negotiating a phone contract, explaining symptoms to a doctor, arguing about a delivery that never arrived — BBB Korea's volunteers will interpret any of it, in real time, over the phone.

Call 1588-5644, follow the prompt, and press the number for your language to be connected directly to a volunteer interpreter. It runs 24 hours a day, in more than 20 languages, and it's free.

Danuri Call Center — for family crises and multicultural households

1577-1366, the Danuri Call Center, is a different kind of line: it exists mainly for immigrant women, marriage migrants and multicultural families, and it's staffed for crisis, not just information. It runs every day of the year, 24 hours, in 15 languages, and can set up a three-way call with police, a hospital or a school on the spot.

Beyond emergencies, it also handles everyday counseling — family and couples counseling, living-information questions, and legal consultation by appointment. If domestic violence, sexual violence or trafficking is involved, this is the number built for exactly that, with trained counselors rather than a general-purpose interpreter on the other end.

Your city probably runs its own line too

Immigration and family-crisis support are national. Everyday settlement help — where to register your address, which class to take, who reviews your lease — is often run locally instead, and it varies by where you live.

If you're outside both, search "[your city] + 외국인주민센터" (foreign resident center) — most metropolitan areas and several provinces run some version of the same thing, usually free and usually happy to work in whatever language gets the job done.

What we see at Soo House

Soo House connects expats and foreign residents in Korea with paid campaigns, classes and community meetups, and the question "who do I even call" shows up in our community feed constantly — usually from someone who's already tried Google Translate on a government letter and given up. It's a good place to ask, because someone in the community has usually hit the exact same wall before you.

But a community answer is still just a guess from a friend, however well-meant. The pattern we've noticed across members is that the people who get unstuck fastest are the ones who go from "I asked in the chat" to "I called the actual line" in the same day — not the ones who wait for a perfect translated explanation before picking up the phone. None of these four numbers need you to already have the right words. That's the whole point of them.

Your next hop: save 1345 and BBB Korea's 1588-5644 in your phone today, before you need either — the day you actually need them is a bad day to be searching for the number.

Useful contacts

• 1345 — Immigration Contact Centre (hikorea.go.kr), 20 languages, weekdays 9am–10pm
• 1588-5644 — BBB Korea, free volunteer interpretation, 24/7, 20+ languages
• 1577-1366 — Danuri Call Center, family and crisis support, 24/7, 15 languages
• 02-2229-4900 — Seoul Global Center network, weekdays 9am–6pm
• 112 / 119 — police / fire and ambulance, for genuine emergencies

Checked in August 2026. The 1345 language count, hours and after-6pm language limit are drawn from the Korea Immigration Service's official page (not directly reachable when this was checked — confirmed instead via Korea Policy Briefing and cross-referenced aggregator coverage citing the same figures) and via HiKorea. BBB Korea's number, language count, free-of-charge status and 24/7 hours come from its official site. The Danuri Call Center's hours, language count and services are drawn from the official Danuri portal, run by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Seoul Global Center's phone number and hours are cross-checked between Seoul's Foreign Resident Portal and Mapo District's mirror of the same listing. The Gyeonggi center's July 2025 relocation and expansion is drawn from contemporaneous Korean news coverage of the move and the Gyeonggi Provincial Women and Family Foundation's January 2026 policy brief on Gyeonggi's immigrant policy; its current contact details weren't directly reachable when this was checked, so confirm at gmis.or.kr before relying on them. Numbers, hours and language lists change — confirm anything urgent directly with the line in question.