SEOUL, July 25 (AJP) - Kookmin University students helped win the top prize and two other awards at a national hackathon that asked humanities and social science students to solve social problems with artificial intelligence.
The 2026 HUSS Convergence Camp Insight hackathon ran from July 1 to 3 at the Sono Calm resort in Gyeongju, backed by the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea and organized by the council of the Humanities Utmost Sharing System (HUSS), a government program that trains humanities and social science students to work across disciplinary lines. About 430 students and program officials took part in the hackathon, with students from different universities and majors grouped into five-member joint teams to propose solutions to social problems.
A total of 55 teams entered. Around 20 advanced through a written preliminary round to the final presentations, where 10 teams took prizes: one top prize carrying the award of the deputy prime minister and education minister, four excellence prizes from the National Research Foundation chairman, and five encouragement prizes from the HUSS council chair.
Kookmin students stood on three of those teams, including the one that won it all.
The top team, Onsaemiro, included Yang Seung-eon of Kookmin's Department of Political Science and International Relations and Lee Tae-ho of the Department of AI, Big Data and Management. The team proposed ORIGIN, a platform that screens AI-generated traditional culture content for distortion before it spreads. The service analyzes such content for likely historical and cultural errors, then runs it past heritage practitioners and experts before issuing certification. Yang researched distortion cases and the surrounding regulations, defined the problem and built the presentation. Lee tested the feasibility of the solution and shaped a business model aimed at government agencies and public institutions.
Kim Yun-seo of the School of Management Information Systems joined the excellence prize team Daumi, which proposed Dahda, an AI-based indoor evacuation navigator for visually impaired people. The service uses Wi-Fi fingerprinting and Bluetooth beacon technology to guide users to the nearest emergency exit during a fire and relays their location inside the building to rescue teams, with voice and vibration guidance tailored to different types of disability. Kim designed and developed the application prototype and handled its interface design.
Hyun Yun-su of the School of Management Information Systems and Choi So-yul of Kookmin University Business School (KIBS) joined the encouragement prize team Poporiner, which proposed Daol, a legal and administrative support service for migrant workers offering individual visa schedule management, administrative information and expert consultations in users' native languages. The two managed the team, planned the service and led the research behind its main functions.
The results gave Kookmin students a hand in solutions spanning cultural content credibility, disaster safety and support for vulnerable groups, the mix of AI technique and humanities grounding the HUSS program was built to produce. The university's HUSS office said it would keep expanding hands-on education that turns that grounding toward real social problems, working through inter-university cooperation and global partnerships.
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