South and North Korea have been divided for the past 70 years since the end of the Korean War. During the time of division, there has been no cultural exchange between the two countries, and the North Korean often has been described as a military threat on the media. The stories about desperate defectors or nuclear threats have been told in the news and the movies, but it is rare to hear about the cultural side of regular citizens of North Korea.

Since the peaceful mood was set after the Inter-Korean Summits in 2018, the

Ministry of Unification wanted to start a campaign that can reinforce this peaceful momentum. The main goal was to create a fun and unique experience for south Koreans to get curious about the cultural side of North Korea.

If it’s impossible to meet a real North Korean in person, how about we create one? We created the world’s first “A.I. North Korean”, a virtual character sharing stories of North Korea on your mobile phone.

This virtual character responds in real-time to any questions about North Korea. It has machined-learned a massive volume of data - specifically on culture, education, history, art, and new technology of North Korea, which often has not been covered in the media before.

This A.I. is generated with a voice-activated mobile app and interactive OOH display, so the audiences can have a conversation and they can ask anything to know better about North Korea. Furthermore, as we built the A.I. persona, we recorded a real North Korean defector and used voice-cloning technology to formulate an average character of North Korean with a friendly tone of voice.

The key insight was to create a fresh new conversation experience empowered by new technology that is relevant to our target audience. Our target audience was Gen-Z who are tech-savvy and fluent with the mobile platform. For this reason, we needed a solution that would be very accessible to the mobile device and satisfy the real-time interaction. So, we built a voice-activated A.I. persona that has machine-learned massive volumes of data about North Korea. Through the app, the audiences can meet the A.I. persona and ask any question such as: Where do young people in North Korea go for a date? Do they use smartphones? And the A.I. will answer those questions and invite the audiences to start to have a casual conversation to know better about today’s North Korean’s lives.

“A.I. North Korean” was introduced to the public as an interactive booth and a mobile app as a major touchpoint to experience.

On November 26, 2019, an interactive booth that can generate a real-time conversation was installed in the center of Seoul City Hall where the exhibition was held, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Inter-Korean language research project. So that, we made sure this project was first-hand exposed to the people who have a high interest in the culture and language of North and South.

Also, we delivered the special mobile kit to the major Youtube influencers. By placing the NFC-enabled character figures on their smartphones, the app will be downloaded and activated to start a conversation. The Youtube influencers broadcasted their live reactions in real-time and share this curious experience to their online audiences. With the power of social media, the news had quickly spread online.

The total conversation time had reached up to 10,802 minutes in the first month of its launch. The total number of questions generated by South Korean audiences reached up to more than 11,610.

After the campaign, more than 82% of the participants responded that they developed a positive outlook on North Korea while 89% responded that they are more likely to say “yes” to try a conversation with the real North Korean one day.

However, unexpected news had followed after its launch. The 2019 North Korea–U.S Summit in Hanoi ended with a rather disappointing result, this project faced the worst scenario a month after its launch. For this reason, we had to close down this project earlier than we originally planned. And the relationship between North and South still remains icy unresolved up until today.