Cohort size decides how many tracks run. A site visit takes twenty students, so a track needs twenty to twenty-five. A hundred places means four tracks; three hundred means twelve. Here is what you learn in each, the kind of floor you walk, and what you produce.
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Seoul — where the cohort lives and works
We do not name companies. Our rule is that no company appears here before a site-visit agreement is signed. “Where you go” below describes the kind of site, not the company. Participants are told the actual destinations once agreements are confirmed. Year one opens with three tracks — K-POP, K-drama and games.
K-POPYear one
What you learn
The trainee system and the road to debut
A&R — sourcing songs through domestic and international writing camps
Building a performance: choreography, visual direction, styling
Trace one song backwards from release to first idea, reconstruct the timeline, and identify who decided what at each step. Or compare one group’s overseas strategy market by market.
Fits Media · Business · Music · Communication · Data
K-drama · FilmYear one
What you learn
Development and commissioning — how a script gets made
How budgets and rights changed after streaming
Pre-production: casting, locations, budgeting
Post — colour, sound mixing, VFX
Global distribution and remake rights
Where you go
Sets and sound stages
Post houses and VFX studios
Development teams at production companies
Broadcast archives
What you produce
Estimate one title’s budget structure and write out its recoupment scenarios. Or trace how overseas viewing data feeds back into commissioning decisions.
Fits Film · Media · Business · Statistics
GamesYear one
What you learn
The development pipeline — design, art, engineering, QA
Running a live service and its update cadence
Free-to-play monetisation and loot box regulation
The esports ecosystem: teams, leagues, broadcast
Overseas publishing and localisation
Where you go
Development studios and QA
Live ops rooms — reacting to real-time metrics
Esports arenas and broadcast production
The game ratings board
What you produce
Analyse one live game’s update history and derive the pattern behind its operating decisions. Or compare how monetisation rules in different jurisdictions changed the design itself.
Fits Computer science · Design · Business · Law
Education · EdTech
What you learn
Korean university admissions and how the private tutoring market formed
Producing online lectures and running the platform
Deploying AI tutoring and measuring whether it works
Education data and privacy
Going abroad — what actually exports
Where you go
Lecture production studios
EdTech engineering teams
Classrooms
Learning analytics teams
What you produce
Produce an English explainer of Korean admissions for a foreign reader. Or propose a study design that would actually measure the effect of an AI tutor.
Follow one pipeline through development and set out the bottleneck at each stage. Or analyse how CDMO contracts are won.
Fits Life sciences · Chemistry · Business · Public health
Medical devices
What you learn
Device approval routes — Korea, US and EU compared
How hospitals decide what to buy
Digital health and clinical data
Export structure and certification
Where you go
Device manufacturing floors
R&D teams
Hospital biomedical engineering teams
Digital health companies
What you produce
Compare one device’s approval route across countries and set out a market entry strategy.
Fits Biomedical engineering · Medicine · Engineering · Policy
Note Patient privacy means that shadowing in clinical settings is limited. This track is built around biomedical engineering and equipment management instead.
Robotics
What you learn
Industrial robots versus cobots
Warehouse automation — how a facility is designed
Service robots from pilot to commercial deployment
The supply chain for reducers, motors and other core parts
Where you go
Robot assembly lines
Automated distribution centres
Robotics labs
Service robot pilot sites
What you produce
Compare one process before and after automation and set out what was replaced and what stayed. Or estimate the payback period on a cobot deployment.
The arrival of internet-only banks and the rules written for them
MyData and the right to move your own financial records
Asset management technology and algorithmic trading
How crypto exchanges are structured and the real-name account rule
Stablecoins and the won — a market where the rules came first
Where blockchain is actually used, and where it is not
Where you go
Fintech companies
Payments infrastructure operators
Internet-only banks
Crypto exchanges and custodians
Blockchain engineering teams
Financial regulators
What you produce
Compare Korean payments against systems elsewhere and judge what would transplant. Or analyse how MyData works in practice. Or trace what Korea’s crypto rules forced exchanges to build.
Fits Economics · Business · Computer science · Law · Cryptography
SemiconductorsYear 2–3
What you learn
Memory process steps and the limits of scaling
The materials, components and equipment ecosystem
Why back-end and packaging now matter
Export controls and supply chain geopolitics
Where you go
Fab visitor areas
Materials, component and equipment makers
Packaging facilities
Semiconductor research clusters
What you produce
Map the suppliers behind one process step. Or trace what export controls did to the chain.
Fits Electrical engineering · Materials · Physics · International relations
Noteaccess inside a fab is the hardest of all to obtain. The case for this track is the strongest and the approval the slowest, so it opens in year two or three.