The National Fire Agency said on the 14th that it revised the "119 situation management standard response manual" to spell out standards and procedures for handling non-urgent and habitual calls unrelated to firefighting activities.
Of about 11 million 119 calls nationwide last year, 195,659 (1.9%) were non-urgent or habitual calls. Of those, 47% (92,936) were made by the top 95 habitual callers (five per metropolitan or provincial government).
The National Fire Agency said it refined the response manual to reduce the workload of 119 situation management caused by non-urgent and habitual calls and to focus on emergency calls directly tied to saving lives.
First, when a call is received, dispatchers will check urgency as a priority, and if they determine it is a non-urgent call unrelated to firefighting activities, they set standards that allow them to end the call after advising the caller to refrain from calling.
They also decided to regularly review the status and details of habitual calls and to manage them separately if needed. In particular, for serious non-urgent habitual callers—based on call frequency, call patterns, and the degree of interference with work—they will provide step-by-step guidance and warnings, and if the behavior continues, they will be able to respond using an automated voice guidance system.
Callers suspected of having mental illness will be guided to receive counseling from specialized institutions such as mental health welfare centers, and calls made solely for routine checkups by people with chronic diseases will be linked to local government welfare and medical services after comprehensively considering residential conditions and disease severity.
However, the National Fire Agency said that even when someone is classified as a habitual caller, urgency cannot be ruled out, so if a situation is deemed urgent, on-site personnel will be dispatched, and safety checks are built into the call response stage, such as determining on site whether a report is false, fabricated, or non-urgent.
To transport severe emergency patients, the agency will check nationwide hospital capacity and support hospital selection centrally so that definitive treatment is possible, and it also included details to flesh out joint response procedures with the Korea Coast Guard so that proactive rescues can be carried out by whichever rescue agency arrives first at the scene in maritime accidents.
Choi Yong-cheol, commissioner of the National Fire Agency, said, "Because non-urgent habitual calls can affect emergency calls where lives are at stake, please refrain from unnecessary calls."