TLDR: The ‘K in My Hands’ platform and the AI-powered ‘Joseon Series’ virtual traditional Korean music instrument have been recognized with top awards at the 2025 Cultural Digital Innovation and Data Utilization Contest. The event, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, highlighted innovative services integrating digital technology and artificial intelligence in the cultural sector.
The ‘2025 Cultural Digital Innovation and Data Utilization Contest,’ organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, has announced its 17 award-winning entries, celebrating advancements in digital technology within the cultural, sports, and tourism sectors. The contest, held on August 19, 2025, was themed ‘Digital changes in cultural daily life, innovation led by artificial intelligence (AI),’ underscoring the growing importance of AI in cultural development.
Out of a total of 223 submissions across various categories—39 in the excellence case sector, 156 in the ideas sector, and 28 in the data analysis sector—two projects stood out in the excellence case sector: ‘K in My Hands’ and the ‘Joseon Series.’
‘K in My Hands’ is an integrated K-Culture journey platform designed to provide K-Culture enthusiasts with comprehensive information on language, travel, and visas. It aims to offer a seamless experience, guiding users from learning K-content to actual travel and local communication.
Complementing this, the ‘Joseon Series’ is a groundbreaking virtual traditional Korean music instrument. This innovative project leverages artificial intelligence to optimize over 6,000 digital sound sources of traditional Korean instruments, originally provided by the National Gugak Center. The AI integration allows any creator to generate high-quality traditional Korean music sound sources, democratizing access to authentic Korean musical heritage.
Other notable awardees included ‘Proto Hologram,’ which received an excellence award for its real-time communication platform utilizing AI and extended reality (XR) technology to implement three-dimensional holograms, enabling global real-time playback and interaction. In the data analysis sector, the ‘K-Novel Translation Market Decision Support Platform’ was recognized for improving translation quality based on large-scale language models and recommending user-customized content through data analysis. ‘Soompik’ also received an excellence award for analyzing cultural heritage data to uncover hidden values and recommend exploration courses based on user location.
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Winners across the excellence case, ideas, and data analysis sectors will be honored with the Minister’s award from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and cash prizes. The official award ceremony is scheduled for November 18 at the Seoul Dragon City Hotel, coinciding with the ‘2025 Cultural Digital Innovation Forum.’
