Seoul fire services missed out on 129 calls due to brief outage

A text message informing citizens to dial 112 in case of fire or emergency due to an error in the 119 emergency call system, Sept. 13, is seen in photo, provided by a reader. Yonhap

Over 120 emergency calls were not received by the Seoul fire department due to a temporary network error earlier this week, but all were non-urgent cases, officials said Saturday.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters, the system error was detected at 8:27 p.m. Friday evening, prompting authorities to send out an alert message requesting citizens to dial 112 in case of an emergency.

In South Korea, people can call the police for help by dialing 112 or the fire department at 119 in emergencies.

The system was partially restored at 8:46 p.m., allowing operators to process the calls manually by identifying the caller's location, before being fully restored at 9:15 p.m.

During the 19-minute system outage, the fire services missed out on 129 calls, but all were found to be non-urgent, according to the officials. (Yonhap)