Common recordings made in Korea
Phone call recordings are a big category in Korea. Many Galaxy phones sold in Korea can record calls, and people keep those files from calls with landlords, employers, contractors and customer service. Upload the M4A file as it is to get a timed text version and find the part you need. For a nokchwirok (녹취록) that will be submitted to a court or another authority, use the transcript as a draft and follow the rules for certified transcripts that apply to your case.
Companies record meetings and write hoeuirok (회의록), meeting minutes. A transcript is a fast starting point: check names and figures, then use the AI prompt export to ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for a summary with decisions and action items. Students record lectures and interviews for their papers and theses, YouTubers need Korean subtitles, and families record parents and grandparents talking about the war or life in their hometown.
Dialects from Busan to Jeju
Seoul speech gives the cleanest transcript. Gyeongsang speech from Busan and Daegu has a distinctive pitch pattern, and Jeolla and Chungcheong speech have their own sentence endings. The transcript usually follows standard spelling, so dialect endings may be written in a standard form or misheard.
Jeju is a special case. The traditional Jeju language, spoken mainly by older people on the island, is different enough from standard Korean that the transcript will be a rough draft at best. Younger Jeju residents mostly speak standard Korean with a local accent, which works much better.
Lecture recordings from large halls are harder than a phone on the desk near the professor. Many Korean universities and instructors restrict lecture recording, so ask before you record.
North Korean defectors speak with northern pronunciation and use some different words, such as northern terms for everyday objects and loanwords from Russian instead of English. Those words may be replaced with a similar South Korean word, so review interviews with defectors carefully.
Other languages heard in Korea
Not every recording made in Korea is in Korean. Each file is transcribed in one language, so choose the one most of the recording is spoken in:
- English: English-taught university courses, international schools, foreign companies and English teachers.
- Chinese: Chinese students in Korean universities and the Korean-Chinese community. Choose Chinese for recordings held in Mandarin.
- Vietnamese: many families with a Vietnamese parent and many students. Vietnamese is in the list.
- Japanese, Russian, Uzbek and Tagalog: all in the list for business calls, migrant communities and family recordings. Uzbek and Tagalog have less training data, so review those drafts fully.
A checklist before you share the text
Korean business and university recordings contain many names, titles and English terms. Check these points before you send a transcript to anyone:
- Names of people, companies and places, and job titles such as 부장 or 교수님 attached to them.
- Amounts in man (만) and eok (억), dates, phone numbers and account numbers.
- English acronyms and product names, which may come out in Hangul or Latin letters.
- Overlapping speech on phone calls and in fast meetings, where short replies may be missing.
- Romanised names for English documents, which you add yourself because the transcript is written in Hangul only.
Editing, exporting and sharing
The transcript is split into paragraphs with timestamps, and the player highlights the current line. Click a line to listen again and correct it. Export DOCX for minutes and reports, CSV for research coding, or SRT and VTT for YouTube subtitles, with timestamps and speaker names on or off. Speaker labels are available on paid plans or with a Minute Pack. Your files are never used to train AI models.
For readers outside Korea, the Google Translate link shows the transcript in English, and the AI prompt export copies it with a ready-made prompt for an AI assistant.