Financial AI in Korea: A Foreigner’s Perspective | Economic Essay

Moving to Korea two years ago came with a series of challenges. Opening a bank account should have been a simple stress-free process; however, it was anything but. I found myself sitting in a customer service chair, receiving form after form to sign, not understanding a single word and with the unsettling feeling that, at some point, I might have signed away my organs! It may sound dramatic, but that confusion is a feeling shared by many of the more than two million foreigners living in Korea, as of 2024. As we enter the age of AI, stories like mine, albeit told with humor, reveal a deeper problematic: the difficulty of accessing essential services in an environment that, although highly technological, has not yet adapted those tools to adequately serve its growing foreign population. In a country with where technological advances are widespread, it is troubling that the service sector, and banking in particular, has yet to integrate these innovations to make life easier for those who do not speak the language or are unfamiliar with local processes. Korea is a world leader in connectiv