The Brief

Having grown up in a communist society, young N. Korean defectors are not used to asking questions. Going through the adolescence period as teenagers makes the matter worse. We’ve created a South Korean-North Korean translator app. to help them with learning difficulties due to language differences. Through this app. they can look up and understand any S. Korean vocabulary they are unfamiliar with. Words in newspapers, public signs and words used in everyday lives are also included. They can submit words that are not on the list anonymously, so that the teenagers could ask any questions without feeling embarrassed.

Creative Execution

In order for young N. Koreans to settle well in the South Korean society, we believed that directly helping them should come simultaneously with improving people’s perception towards them. By creating the translator app., which offers a service that is available nowhere else, not even on Google Translate, we aimed to provide substantial help in their studies, while also drawing people’s attention to the seriousness of linguistic difficulties they face here. We launched the app. at the Android market on March 18 and at Apple Store on April 21.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The main target audience for this app. are the young N. Korean defectors. But in the long run, we also aim to reach all S. Koreans that tend to have prejudice against N. Korean defectors. DreamTouchForAll annually hosts a summer camp for young N. Koreans and S. Koreans. Despite their differences, they end up relating to each other and become friends. That’s when we realized the power of communication. We hoped through our project, the South Korean kids would understand better about the language difficulties faced by the defectors and become a little more tolerant to the linguistic differences.

Results

There are about 2,183 young N. Korean defectors living in S. Korea. During the first 3 weeks of launching, the app. was downloaded about 2,000 times. Even more meaningful was how many S. Koreans downloaded it too. Although the number of the actual app. users was not significant, the very existence of the translator translating Korean into Korean drew people’s attention. The app. was featured in the media 47 times. One of S. Korea’s most popular news anchor introduced this app. during the headline news as “a translator that translates not only words but also minds”. With cooperation from Korea Hana Foundation (affiliated with the Ministry of Unification) DreamTouchForAll is planning to hold an essay contest for N.Korean students. It has effectively kick-started active discussion on the language gap between the two Koreas and the issue of young N. Koreans.