A growing wave of women entrepreneurs are reshaping South Korea’s highly competitive content industry, and the Pangyo Gyeonggi Culture Creation Hub has emerged as a central platform for fostering women-led startups in the sector.

The hub, run by Gyeonggi Content Agency, has supported numerous female entrepreneurs, including Korea Deep Learning CEO Kim Ji-hyun, GemGem Therapeutics CEO Kim Jung-eun and Studio Boldy CEO Min Hyun-kyung, who are blending creativity and technology to address practical consumer needs.

“As South Korea’s content industry continues to grow -- with exports surging 5.7-fold over the past 14 years -- the contributions of women entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly vital,” the Pangyo Gyeonggi Culture Creation Hub said.

Vision AI solutions: Korea Deep Learning

Founded in 2019, Korea Deep Learning specializes in artificial intelligence solutions for visual content for government and corporate clients.

The company’s flagship product, Deep Image, is a large vision model capable of processing multimodal data such as images, video, text and audio. Its applications range from optical character recognition and object detection to 3D model generation.

In the five years since its establishment, Korea Deep Learning has achieved cumulative revenue of approximately 10 billion won ($7.1 million), with nine AI technology patents.

The company said it recently secured an exclusive 3D data supply agreement with CGTrader, a Lithuania-based global 3D model platform. The company has been recognized as an Nvidia Inception Elite Company in 2024. It also became the first Korean company to win first place in the Edison Awards’ Engineering & Manufacturing Tools category.

“Our success lies in identifying market challenges and proposing tailored solutions,” CEO Kim Ji-hyun said. “By addressing complex issues such as budget constraints, efficiency, data security and reliability, we’ve developed AI technology that meets the unique needs of public institutions.”

AR games for rehabilitation: GemGem Therapeutics

GemGem Therapeutics developing augmented reality games for rehabilitation and special education was established in 2022 by Kim Jung-eun, a former game designer and a mother to a child with cerebral palsy.

Combining her 10 years of professional experience working as a game designer at Nexon and her experience of caring for her child, Kim established the company to address the challenges of rehabilitation therapy.

“Rehabilitation is costly and time-intensive, especially for working parents,” Kim said. “As a working mom myself, I wanted to create an accessible and engaging way to support children with disabilities. Our goal is to help these children realize their limitless potential.”

First established as a one-person startup, the company established a corporate body in 2023 and is steadily growing in size. Its AR game solutions for early childhood rehabilitation won the Grand Prize at the 2023 Women’s Startup Competition hosted by the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

GemGem Therapeutics has secured 900 million won ($645,000) in funding, including a recent bridge investment of 400 million won for further development of its therapy solutions.

AI-driven UI/UX platform: Studio Boldy

Studio Boldy, founded in June 2024 by designer-turned-entrepreneur Min Hyun-kyung, operates UI Bowl, an AI-powered platform designed to streamline the workflow of user interface and user experience designers. The platform provides access to over 35,000 UI/UX design images from 300 apps, enabling designers to quickly find inspiration and references without the time-consuming task of manually researching apps.

“Before UI Bowl, designers had to install multiple apps just to gather references,” Min said. “Our platform simplifies this process, allowing professionals to focus on creativity.”

Within months of its founding, the company has already received accolades, including the top prize in the Startup Networking Festival’s IR Demo Day and the Grand Prize in Suwon Startup Audition. With a growing user base of over 30,000, UI Bowl is gaining traction as a valuable tool for design professionals, according to Min.

Reflecting on her journey, Min acknowledged the challenges and strengths of being a female entrepreneur.

“Being a female entrepreneur can sometimes feel isolating, but I’ve found that women-led teams often excel in strategic planning,” Min said. “Our all-female team brings a unique perspective that strengthens our business.”