What a wonderful helpline it is!
Today, I would like to introduce one of public services the Seoul government provide as I think it's quite interesting and useful to know.
A couple of years ago, the Seoul government integrated all help lines including borough offices into one line and made 120 Dasan call centre.
What is a barrel of laughs point of it is that this service is operating 24hours a day, 365 days a year, year after year and you can get any answers you want to know like where is a good place to go out with my girl friend?, Where can I get a part time job? How do I get to Gyeongbokgung(Palace)? etc from professional counselors. This service is also operating with text message,sign language, online chat, SNS and smart phone application. Besides the service is provided in different languages such as English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Mongolian even though the service operation time is shorter than Korean service.
Why did Seoul office name this service Dasan?
Dasan(茶山) is a pen-name of Jeong, Yak-yong who was a great thinker, philosopher, author, poet, scientist and engineer back in the 18th century. ( I want to call him the Korean Leonardo da Vinci). He taught Justice, Integrity to the public and many were touched by his lessons. To emulate his footsteps, the Seoul Government named this public service Dasan.
If so why 120 ??
This is one of the emergency numbers in Korea. Below is all the helpline numbers.
You can call 111 if you ever find North Korean spy and can get up to 0.7 million won. Funny haha and also sad,, isn't it?
I hope you find this information interesting and useful for your Seoul trip. :-)