Korea faces a structural crisis of population decline. The government is pushing to attract 300,000 international students under "Study Korea 300K," but the on-the-ground response is lukewarm. That is because cases keep recurring in which hard-won talent leaves again after failing to overcome language barriers and adapt to organizations.
Stelup, an Edtech startup founded in Nov. 2024, found the answer to this problem in "advancing Korean-language education."
Meeting recently with ChosunBiz, Stelup chief Oh Min-ji said, "We have moved past the Korean 1.0 era for travel and entered the 'Korean education 2.0' era for employment and long-term settlement," adding, "Practical Korean-language infrastructure that determines foreigners' employment and settlement will become a national competitive edge."
Stelup provides practical, work-focused Korean-language education services for foreign job seekers and employees. Its flagship service is the mobile learning platform "Hangeuling," which supports both actual job preparation and on-site adaptation through job-specific conversational expressions and mock interview simulations.
The cumulative number of learners is currently about 10,000, and collaboration is expanding mainly with corporations and public institutions. Oh said, "As an app-based education service usable without time or location constraints, it is receiving particularly positive feedback from workers at industrial sites in regional areas."
Stelup's goal is to shorten the average six months it takes foreign workers to adapt to their roles to one to two months. To that end, it plans to record real voices from industrial sites and select high-frequency expressions to build "standard practical expressions."
Specialized training for office workers is also in the works. It covers overall practical competencies from how to use the Hangul (HWP) program, which is unfamiliar to foreigners, to Korean-style sales and marketing communication methods. The plan is to build "soft infrastructure" that leads North American and European talent to choose Korea over Japan or China.
Oh said, "If Korean society perceives foreigners only as a workforce for tough jobs, it will be hard to move toward a society that respects diversity," adding, "Educational infrastructure must also be built so that white-collar talent can choose Korea."
Stelup's main revenue model now is services for corporations and institutions. Its collaboration with the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives is one example. Oh explained, "At sea, communication failures can directly lead to loss of life," adding, "We digitized the federation's existing training materials and reorganized them into content tailored to fishing sites."
Corporations can use a manager page to check foreign employees' learning achievement in real time, and they can also use Stelup's service as an HR management platform to send bulk notices such as voice phishing prevention alerts and safety rules.
Oh said, "From the perspective of corporations, if they hire foreigners and satisfaction drops due to a lack of communication, they will not try hiring foreigners again," adding, "Stelup aims to reduce this risk and create a virtuous cycle in foreign hiring."
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology underpins the ability to support learners of various nationalities and levels at the same time. Stelup is focusing especially on collecting nationality-specific speech data.
Learners from major countries such as Japan, China and Vietnam have different Korean pronunciation and error patterns. Based on this data, Stelup's AI analyzes learners' weak points and adjusts the curriculum in real time. It also has a verification system that remembers expressions a learner got wrong, transforms them into similar sentences and tests again. Only after passing two or three verifications is it deemed "acquired."
Leveraging its accumulated data asset, Stelup also plans to pursue a "business Korean certification" venture. It obtained approval from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to issue a private certification and is preparing a proof of concept (PoC) first for learners from Vietnam.
In the long term, the strategy is to expand into a settlement support platform. Oh cited the reason, saying, "Korea's foreign talent policy is still run by the numbers," and "the sense of isolation and maladaptation experienced after joining a company is relatively left unaddressed."
Oh said, "If the government designs macro-level policies, Edtech corporations that hear foreigners' voices closest on the ground can play a practical role in adaptation support."
Stelup is currently raising a seed round. Having confirmed initial marketability, it plans to accelerate technology advancement and market expansion.
Ultimately, the focus is on creating synergy through strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The idea is to combine with settlement-related services for foreigners such as visas, communications and hiring to complete a single foreigner settlement value chain.
Oh said, "By 2030, our goal is to establish the perception that 'for Korean preparation, it's Hangeuling,'" adding, "In 10 years, we want to become a corporation that contributes to Korea moving toward a society with true diversity."