Kim Taek-jung, Lee Ju-han recognized for practical skills in AI planning, data analysis and service implementation
Delinquency data used to identify 232 households in need; AI complaint-analysis system also developed
Two civil servants from Gangnam-gu have earned "AI Champion Blue," a public-sector AI proficiency certification awarded by the Ministry of Interior and Safety.
The two recipients, certified in an evaluation held in July, are Kim Taek-jung of the Tax Management Division and Lee Ju-han of the Resident Self-Governance Division, both civil servants.
AI Champion is a competency certification program run by the Ministry of Interior and Safety to develop practical talent capable of solving public administration problems directly through AI and data. Within the program, the Blue rating is given to hands-on performers who can plan and design AI innovation and carry it through to actual service implementation. Of the 18 people certified at the Blue level across the Seoul Metropolitan Government and its 25 districts in 2026, two are from Gangnam-gu. The district attributes this to its efforts to encourage staff to build AI skills and apply them to real work.
The two employees each brought AI into different areas of administrative work to drive tangible improvements.
Kim Taek-jung applied AI to tax delinquency management. Using a self-developed system that links delinquency data, he analyzed records for 37,571 individual delinquent taxpayers and identified 232 people who might need welfare support. Of them, 49 were connected to welfare services, including 36 who had not previously been captured by the existing welfare system. The case illustrates how delinquency information can be used not only for tax collection but also to uncover blind spots in welfare coverage.
He also automated repetitive administrative tasks himself. He developed tools including G-FORM for producing documents in bulk, G-Navi for optimizing business trip routes, G-PhotoReport for compiling on-site photo reports, G-Signature and G-Signature 2 for electronic signatures, G-PDF for compressing supporting documents, and G-Mailbot for mass email distribution. In all, he has built 12 such work-automation projects using generative AI. The achievements earned him the grand prize in Seoul's best-practice awards for local tax delinquency collection and a spot in the Seoul Metropolitan Government's creative proposal program. Some of his programs have since been shared with other districts.
Lee Ju-han developed and has been running "Healing Webzine," the online content platform of the Gangnam Healing Center, on his own. He also built "Healing Tarot" using AI, expanding the center's content so that its previously offline-focused healing programs could also be accessed online.
Building on this experience, Lee took on the AI Champion Blue certification process and practical exam, and after completing it, expanded the ideas he had gained into actual work. As a result, he developed a new AI-based complaint analysis and management system for the Gangnam Healing Center.
The system moves away from the previous method of reading and classifying complaints one by one, instead automatically extracting key words and analyzing whether opinions are positive, negative or neutral. It compares complaint patterns across centers and flags complaints that require priority attention, allowing the results to be used for future program operation and service improvement.
Gangnam-gu plans to use the two employees' certifications as more than a personal achievement, treating them instead as an opportunity to raise AI capability across the entire organization. The district intends to encourage staff training and in-house development so employees can apply generative AI and data to real administrative work, and to share field-tested cases with other departments.
"Our employees are not stopping at learning AI — they are using it to directly solve on-the-ground problems such as taxes and welfare," said Kim Hyun-ki, Gangnam-gu district mayor. "We will continue to develop field-oriented AI talent to build faster and more convenient administrative services."
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