AI and product engineering for Korean teams taking products global.
A software engineer for Korean teams, working remotely from Mumbai with my morning in your afternoon. It is for startups and scale-ups going global that need AI and product engineering at speed, built to meet US and European privacy expectations from the first release.
01
What teams in South Korea bring me
You're taking a product to the US or Europe and it has to meet their privacy and accessibility expectations from the first release.
You want AI features shipped quickly, with evaluations so quality doesn't drift after launch.
Your team needs senior engineering capacity for a few months to hit a launch date.
02
Working with teams in Seoul
Korea is three and a half hours ahead, the same as Japan: my morning is your afternoon. Seollal and Chuseok are in my calendar, and the work runs in short cycles with a demo at the end of each.
Each city's 09:00–18:00 working day on the clock in Mumbai (UTC+5:30), in January and in July, so daylight saving is accounted for.
| City | In January | In July |
|---|---|---|
| SeoulUTC+9 | 05:30–14:30 | The same |
The rules that apply here: Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) · GDPR and US state privacy laws · The AI Basic Act
03
Contracts and invoicing in South Korea
Invoices in won or US dollars, per milestone, paid through Wise or Payoneer. I can work under your services agreement with milestones.
Tax and legal treatment depends on your company and country: confirm it with your accountant or counsel.
04
Data protection and the rules that apply
Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA)
Supervised by the Personal Information Protection Commission, with strict rules on consent and on transferring personal data abroad.
Source: Personal Information Protection Commission: laws and regulations
GDPR and US state privacy laws
Going to Europe or the US adds GDPR and the US state privacy laws. It is cheaper to design for them in the same pass than to retrofit them.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)
The AI Basic Act
Korea's Framework Act on the Development of AI and Establishment of Trust took effect on 22 January 2026. Businesses offering products or services that use high-impact or generative AI must tell users in advance, and generative-AI and deepfake outputs must be labelled in a clearly recognisable way. The Ministry of Science and ICT said it would defer regulatory enforcement for at least one year and run a support desk. The engineering: a notice before use and a label on generated output, built once and applied everywhere.
Source: Korea.kr (Ministry of Science and ICT): the AI Basic Act takes effect (인공지능기본법 22일 시행)
This is engineering guidance, not legal advice: confirm what applies to your business with your counsel.
05
Where teams in South Korea usually start
AI features in your product
LLM features that work on your real data, measured before they ship.
- Price
- Fixed-price scoping sprint, then a fixed-scope quote
- Timeline
- A scoping sprint first, then a timeline agreed per project
AI agents and MCP servers
Agents that act in your tools with permissions, audit logs and a person in the loop.
- Price
- Fixed-scope quote after a scoping call
- Timeline
- Agreed per project after a scoping call
MVP Sprint
A production-grade first version of your product, at a fixed price and on dates fixed after the scoping week.
- Price
- Fixed price, agreed at the end of the scoping week
- Timeline
- Set at the end of the scoping week
Launch-day readiness
Your biggest day shouldn't be your first real load test.
- Price
- Fixed price for readiness; on-call cover priced per day
- Timeline
- Best started well before the event
06
Case studies behind this work
- Case study: Zyrobe · AI wardrobe app
- average time per image, upload to result
- 3–8 s
- Case study: Exhibit Social · B2B SaaS platform
- influencers indexed
- 10,000+
- Case study: InfluencerX · Real-time voting platform
- users over the campaign
- 1.6M+
07
Questions from teams in South Korea
Do you work in Korean?
I work in English. For Korean-language products I build the interface and its structure, and the copy comes from a native writer.
How do we start?
With a small, fixed-price first step. The contact page shows my current availability.
Can you help us prepare for the US or EU?
Yes: a review of the architecture and data handling, and what must change for those markets, as engineering guidance rather than legal advice.
Which privacy rules apply when we launch in Europe and the US?
Korea's Personal Information Protection Act applies at home, with strict rules on consent and on transferring personal data abroad. Going to Europe adds the GDPR and going to the US adds the state privacy laws, and it is cheaper to design for them in the same pass than to retrofit them. The guides to US state privacy laws and Global Privacy Control and to the European Accessibility Act cover two of the rules a launch in those markets meets. This is engineering guidance, not legal advice.
Does the AI Basic Act affect an AI feature?
It can. Since 22 January 2026, businesses offering products or services that use high-impact or generative AI must tell users in advance, and generative-AI and deepfake outputs must be labelled in a clearly recognisable way. The Ministry of Science and ICT said it would defer regulatory enforcement for at least one year and run a support desk. The engineering is a notice before use and a label on generated output, built once and applied everywhere, as part of AI features from the first version. Your counsel confirms what applies.
How do we work across the time difference?
Korea is three and a half hours ahead of India, the same as Japan, so my morning is your afternoon. The work runs in short cycles with a demo at the end of each, and written updates carry what a call doesn't. Seollal and Chuseok are in my calendar.
08
Related writing
- Article: RAG evaluation sets: what goes in and how to score them · 2 November 2026
How to build the set of questions that tells you whether a retrieval-augmented AI feature is getting better or worse, and how to score retrieval and answers separately.
- Article: Prompt injection in RAG and agent systems: direct, indirect, and the tests that catch it · 2 November 2026
What prompt injection is, why retrieval systems and agents are most exposed to the indirect kind, which defences actually reduce the risk, and how to test for it on every change.