The Nearest Search Party Is the Neighbor Next Door
가장 가까운 실종수색대, 동네 이웃
Film
Campaign board
See the board ↗The translation and summary on this page were generated with AI. Some wording and proper nouns may be rendered imprecisely.
About the campaign
About 70,000 people go missing in Korea every year, but existing missing-person alerts are broadcast in bulk across wide areas, making it hard for information to reach the people most likely to actually spot someone. Daangn's 'Come Back Home' connected in real time to police missing-person data and combined maps, comments, and sighting reports to deliver information straight to nearby neighbors in the area where the person went missing. It turned a one-way alert into a neighborhood safety network where people search together, aiming to shorten the golden hour for finding someone.
AI summary
South Korea's biggest neighborhood app, Daangn, rebuilt the country's missing-person alerts so they reach only the people living within a mile or two of where someone vanished. Instead of a nationwide text blast that people had learned to ignore, neighbors now see a familiar street or market on a map and can add tips in the comments in real time. In its very first month, 1,233 missing people were found and their alerts switched off. An everyday marketplace app became a life-saving neighborhood search party.
Cultural context
Daangn (internationally 'Karrot') is South Korea's dominant hyperlocal app, built entirely around your immediate neighborhood (dong-ne) — so a radius-limited safety alert fits naturally into a space people already use to trade goods and read local news. The campaign reworks Korea's government emergency-SMS missing-person alerts, which most Koreans experience as noisy and fatiguing; that shared frustration is the emotional starting point.