On November 9th Shin Bae Kim, president of SK Telecom, received an appreciation plaque from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This award was given in recognition of his contributions to an increase in Korean citizens’ security while they are abroad. Under president Kim’s direction, SK Telecom has been providing an ’Overseas Emergency Report’ service in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, since last May. The service is designed to offer disaster warnings and countermeasures to deal with emergency situations, to international roaming service users abroad. This is done through text messages on their mobile phones.

The text messages are transmitted to roaming service users in about eighty countries (including Japan, China, Europe, and Southeast Asia) around the world via a message transmission system in the Consul Call Center of the Ministry. This system is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The emergency messages are prepared by the Ministry, and sent through SK Telecom’s international roaming networks.

To date, emergency report messages have been transmitted a total of seven times to users located in earthquake-occurring and potential terror risk regions e.g. England, Egypt, etc.

The number of SK Telecom’s International Roaming Service users reached 560,000 in 2003, and climbed to 1.12 million in 2004. The number is expected to increase every year, as it has already reached 1.7 million so far this year. In this regard, The ?Overseas Emergency Report Service’ will contribute a great deal to the security of Korean citizens who travel overseas.