Come Back Home
1,233 neighbors found in a month — because the alert only reached their block
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AI Translation 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.
Entry Information
Summary
South Korea reports nearly 70,000 missing person cases every year. To improve search efforts, the National Police Agency introduced a nationwide Missing Person Alert system in 2021. However, its broad distribution often caused location mismatches and alert fatigue. Daangn, Korea’s No.1 hyperlocal community platform, transformed this system by using its Radius Targeting Technology to deliver alerts only to neighbors living within 1.5–3km of the disappearance site. By syncing police data every 10 minutes with real-time location technology, Daangn created a precise, community-based missing person alert system. Within one month, 1,233 missing individuals were found and cleared from the list, demonstrating how hyperlocal technology can innovate into a new model for public safety.
Strategy
The strategy started from a simple insight: the people most likely to find a missing person are not the distant masses, but the neighbors closest to the disappearance site. To reinvent the existing text-based alert system, Daangn built three strategic pillars: Neighborhood-Level Precision — alerts delivered only within a 1.5–3km radius. Visualized Intuition — Map UI transformed abstract data into intuitive locations. Interactive Social Grid — comments and shares enabled real-time reporting and communication. By combining hyperlocal technology with community participation, Daangn has created an interactive neighborhood safety network, redefining its digital platform as innovative safety infrastructure.
Execution
Following an MOU with the Korean National Police Agency, Daangn built an automated system that syncs missing person API data every 10 minutes and delivers alerts only to users within a 1.5–3km radius. By integrating Map UI and community features like comments and shares, Daangn transformed passive alerts into real-time neighborhood participation.The innovation lay in the “context of daily life.” Users encountered life-saving information naturally while browsing local news or trading goods, without requiring a separate app or additional behavioral change. Seeing a missing person’s last location near their home or a familiar market lowered psychological barriers and instantly converted passive awareness into immediate action.
Results
Within just one month of its launch, the 'Come Back Home' campaign successfully led to the safe return of 1,233 missing neighbors (deactivating their missing person alerts). The campaign also significantly boosted platform engagement, resulting in a 10-fold increase in related tab traffic and a 12-fold increase in map click-through rates. Ultimately, by winning the Grand Prix at Korea’s top advertising awards and multiple honors at ADFEST and Spikes Asia, the initiative proved both its exceptional creativity and profound social impact. These results demonstrate how a digital community platform can innovate into a vital life-saving infrastructure by modernizing the way neighbors protect one another.