SK Telecom said on the 4th that it successfully held side events for the "SK AI Summit 2025," including a hackathon co-hosted with Anthropic and the 26th Happy AI Coding Challenge for youth with disabilities.
SK Telecom held the "Claude Code Builder Hackathon" with Anthropic and Coxwave, an AI product analytics platform company, at COEX on the 3rd. Despite a short two-week application period, the hackathon drew hundreds of applicants, signaling strong interest across the AI industry. About 100 top AI practitioners, comprising individuals and teams that passed staged screenings, advanced to the final round that day. Participants included many working at the forefront of Korea's AI field, such as in-house developers from large corporations and Start - Up companies handling AI-related tasks, as well as academic researchers and winners of various programming contests.
In the final round, the on-site theme was "boosting productivity in everyday work," and participants had to implement solutions within the allotted time using Anthropic's AI coding tool, "Claude Code." SK Telecom said it designed the hackathon to go beyond simple idea proposals and become a practical development competition where all participants implement AI-based solutions that maximize productivity using the latest AI coding agents. Despite the three-hour time limit, participants showcased high-level deliverables that could be demonstrated on site.
Benjamin Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, attended in person, joined a panel discussion, served as a judge, and engaged with participants, adding meaning to the event. In the panel discussion, he said, "Claude Code can boost productivity even for novice developers if they use clear instructions and testing," and noted, "Some tasks still require human judgment, but with proper guidance and safeguards, we can maximize the capabilities of AI agents."
First place in the hackathon went to team "AutoRag," which showcased an AI system that detects voice phishing in real time during a call using an LLM (large language model). Second place went to team "Aristo," which developed a local hybrid memory system that shares context among AI agents, and third place went to team "Viber," which developed an AI prompt tuning platform that automatically generates and improves prompts optimized through a genetic algorithm. The first-place winner received $10,000 in Claude credits, while the second- and third-place winners received $6,000 and $3,000 in Claude credits, respectively.
In addition, SK Telecom is holding the "Youth Happy AI Coding Challenge," a coding competition, as a side event of the SK AI Summit over two days on the 3rd and 4th of this month. Launched in 1999 as the "Information Retrieval Competition" and marking its 26th year, the Happy AI Coding Challenge is a flagship Korea IT event for youth with disabilities, organized by the Korea Differently Abled Federation and sponsored by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare. This year, a total of 164 people participated (114 youth with disabilities and 50 teachers).
Held under the theme "Time of possibility: from challenge to leap," the Happy AI Coding Challenge features on the first day the "Hope Challenge," where students with visual, hearing, and physical disabilities take on an AI-powered video editing task under the slogan "Journey of challenge," and the "Vision Challenge," where students with developmental disabilities try producing webtoons using AI. In addition, the "Mission Challenge," which includes card coding and performance tasks using Albert, an educational robot, is held for all participating students, offering a variety of AI application tasks.
Teams that performed well in each challenge received awards: the Minister of Science and ICT Award for the "Hope Challenge," the Minister of Education Award for the "Vision Challenge," and the Minister of Health and Welfare Award for the "Mission Challenge." In addition, to encourage the courage of youths taking on new challenges with AI, various prizes were prepared for each challenge, including the SK Telecom President's Award and the Standing Representative Award of the Korea Differently Abled Federation.
In addition, former KBS announcer Choi Gukhwa served as host, and three invited guests—Shin Hong-yun, a disability awareness improvement lecturer; Jang Hye-yeong, a creator; and Kim Ji-woo, a YouTuber with a brain lesion disability—delivered special talks sharing their experiences and messages.