A Mongolian Mover Shouted to a Korean Hanging From the 14th Floor: “Please Trust Me”

Featured photo: High-rise apartment blocks in Korea at dawn (not the site of the rescue). Photo: Robert at Picasa, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

The man who pulled a Korean worker back up after he was left hanging from the outside of a 14th-floor apartment, screaming for help, was Batbayar Jandanbat, a young Mongolian man who’d been carrying someone else’s furniture in the building across the way. What he kept repeating as he held on with his bare hands was one sentence in clumsy Korean: “Please trust me.”

A snapped harness, a closed door and bare hands

It happened on November 14, 2025, at an apartment complex in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province. The safety harness of a man, identified only as A, who was working on the building’s outer wall snapped, and he was left hanging from a railing 14 floors up (Munhwa Ilbo, Financial News, October 30, 2026, citing Yonhap).

Jandanbat, moving furniture in the complex across the street, heard the screams. He called 119, Korea’s emergency number, and then ran without waiting for rescuers. He pounded on the door of the 14th-floor unit where A was hanging, but at first no one opened it. He kept pounding until a resident finally let him in, and he went straight to the balcony and reached out past the railing (Munhwa Ilbo).

Holding on was harder than reaching him. A’s left hand was caught on an air conditioner’s outdoor unit, and fear had drained the strength from his grip. “His left hand was stuck on the outdoor unit so I couldn’t grab it,” Jandanbat explained, and “he was really scared too, so he had no strength in his hands” (Munhwa Ilbo). It was the kind of spot where if one man’s hand slipped, both were in danger.

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What held him there was clumsy Korean

Without letting go, Jandanbat kept talking to the terrified man: “Please trust me. I’ll hold you and pull you up” (Munhwa Ilbo). Repeating it over and over, he held on until he hauled A over the railing and onto the balcony.

A man hanging from the 14th floor needed more than arm strength. He needed to be sure that the person holding him could be trusted. A Mongolian worker who had been in Korea for seven years handed him that certainty in Korean. It was a sentence where a little bad grammar didn’t matter at all.

He looked back on that day like this: “I ran because I thought if I didn’t help fast, he’d really fall. Korean or Mongolian, nationality doesn’t matter. Even if I went back to that moment, if I saw someone in danger I’d do exactly the same” (Financial News). The two met again about a week later, and A told him, “Whatever you need, I’ll help. Be sure to call me” (Munhwa Ilbo).

In Korea, Mongolians carry the boxes

It’s no accident Jandanbat was there that day. Moves in Korea are usually done in a single day by full-service moving companies with a ladder truck and a lorry. One comment under a news story shows what Mongolian workers mean on those jobs: “They say moving companies these days can’t work without Mongolians. Strong and hardworking. In the business it’s moving is Mongolia, cleaning is Thailand” (Yonhap story comment, 32 likes).

Jandanbat is now a team leader at that moving company, bridging his foreign co-workers and the Korean staff. The company’s head said, “A normal person would have called 119 and watched, but the moment he saw someone hanging, in the middle of a job, he ran without hesitation,” adding that “he gets along well with his co-workers and always leads by example” (Financial News).

Yonhap posted this video on October 29, and when I checked early on November 3 it had passed 897,000 views.

Korea has repaid foreign rescuers with the right to stay

Once the story got out, the comments ran almost entirely one way: “Someone like this should get Korean permanent residency or citizenship” (Edaily story comment, 254 likes), “Naturalize people like this” (Munhwa Ilbo story comment, 244 likes) and “LG Righteous Award, go get him” (Korea Economic Daily story comment, 64 likes). The LG Righteous Award is a prize LG has given since 2015 to citizens who risk themselves for others.

The demand isn’t empty talk. Korea has done it three times already. In 2017, Nimal, a Sri Lankan who ran into a burning house in Gunwi, North Gyeongsang Province, to save an elderly woman, was an undocumented migrant whose visa had expired, yet he was officially recognized as injured while rescuing others and received permanent residency from the Ministry of Justice in 2018, the first person granted it for saving a Korean citizen’s life (Newsis, December 14, 2018). In 2020, Ali, a Kazakh man who saved about ten residents from a fire in a studio apartment building in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, was found to be undocumented too, but received the LG Righteous Award and the same official recognition (Nocut News, Newsis, 2020). During the 2025 Yeongdeok wildfire, Indonesian sailor Sugianto and two co-workers carried seven residents on their backs to a breakwater 300 meters away, and within a month received long-term “special contributor” residence status (F-2-16) (Chosun Ilbo, April 7, 2025; eToday).

Jandanbat’s case differs from theirs in one way. For almost a year, nobody knew. The person who brought it to light wasn’t him, but a tipster who wanted the rescue widely known (Financial News).

And this time, an old habit of Korean news was turned upside down. Across a dozen or so outlets that reported it, the one who stayed nameless as “A” to the end was the Korean, and the one printed with his full name was the mover from Mongolia.

Sources

• Yonhap, October 29, 2026, Yonhap YouTube
• Munhwa Ilbo, October 30, 2026
• Financial News, October 30, 2026
• Naver News comments (sorted by likes, checked early November 3, 2026): Yonhap, Edaily, Munhwa Ilbo, Korea Economic Daily
• Nimal: Newsis, December 14, 2018
• Ali: Nocut News, 2020, Hankyoreh, April 2020
• Sugianto: Chosun Ilbo, April 7, 2025, eToday