The South Korean government has launched an app that allows stalking victims to receive notifications if their stalker comes within range. More than 400 people are registered in the scheme, which has been in place since June.
Control centers in Seoul and Daejeon cover more than 5,000 people with electronic surveillance and process 19,000 alerts a day, The Guardian reports. “Most are filtered out by center staff, but about 300 a day are serious enough to warrant a referral from a probation officer.”
“Cases of persecution are on the rise” in South Korea. In the four years since the special stalking law was introduced in 2021, the number of reports has tripled, reaching 44,687 in 2025. Many South Koreans believe the government needs to do more to address the root causes of the epidemic.
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Previously, survivors received a text message warning them if their stalker was nearby and indicating the approximate distance, The Guardian reported. The new app notifies the victim if their stalker is within a 2km radius, marking their exact location on a real-time map.
If the criminal comes closer than a kilometer, the application will notify the police; Probation will then call the victim to ensure their safety and may dispatch officers to the scene.
One incident in particular accelerated the development of the app, according to The Korea Times. In March, a woman in her 20s was allegedly murdered by her ex-partner, who was the subject of numerous restraining orders and was wearing an ankle monitor to track his whereabouts. The victim was wearing a smartwatch given to her by the police for protection. Between 2021 and August 2025, 23 murders or attempted murders involved victims who were issued emergency warning devices, according to lawmaker Lee Kwang-hee, a member of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, The Korea Herald reported.
Tracking remains controversial. Under current laws, police must apply through the legal system to force a suspected stalker to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet. In 2024 and 2025, 29,404 people were arrested in stalking cases, of which only 1,187 were prosecuted. Only 427 of them were provided.
“Mixed” reactions
Although the app is “in its early days” and has a “limited scope”, it has received “mixed” reactions, The Guardian reports. One stalking victim who spent “two weeks moving between government domestic violence shelters before being given a panic button” told the newspaper she would “welcome” the detailed, real-time information provided by the app.
“Knowing the whereabouts of a criminal can be more helpful than not knowing,” Soojeong Kim of the Korean Women’s Hotline told the newspaper. But victims may end up “checking everywhere they go” to see if the perpetrator has entered range, “exacerbating the psychological burden of living with the threat.” Knowing too much about the stalker’s whereabouts “risks shifting responsibility for one’s safety” to the victim.
Non-technological measures are also planned to improve the safety of victims. In April 2027, the government is changing the legal process to allow stalking victims to “directly apply to the court for a restraining order”, rather than relying on law enforcement to make requests on their behalf, The Straits Times reported. A new task force was created in July to focus on “addressing gaps in laws, systems and local responses” regarding stalking crimes, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported. The country’s Justice Ministry has also developed a “specialized psychological treatment program to identify risk factors for recidivism” in stalkers.
