The Challenge of “Bareun Jeom,” a Braille Technology Bridging Visually Impaired People in South and North Korea

“Bareun Jeom” is a service launched to address information accessibility challenges faced by visually impaired people due to differences between the South and North Korean braille systems. Although the two Koreas share the same braille roots, decades of division and separate development have led to divergent systems. As a result, confusion may arise over braille notation and legal standards after reunification or when expanding business into the North Korean market.

Bareun Jeom aims to solve this problem through technology. Its core approach is to build a North Korean braille database and provide a conversion function that transforms Hangul into North Korean braille. This would help companies entering the North Korean market comply with braille-related regulations. Given that Hangul and braille hold equal legal validity, braille conversion technology and data infrastructure can be viewed as important foundational work at the national level.

Through interviews with North Korean defectors, the team confirmed that braille is used in North Korea in real settings such as munitions factories and companies, and that events like White Cane Day are also held. During research, the team also identified another practical barrier: in South Korea, braille on medicines is often provided around the product name rather than the usage (e.g., “cold medicine”). This can make it difficult for visually impaired people who use North Korean braille to understand medication information in South Korea. This finding highlighted how differences between the two systems can become a direct obstacle in everyday life.

Based on this problem awareness and technical approach, Bareun Jeom won the Grand Prize at the 2030 Unification Future Hackathon. Starting with braille technology, the team shared its vision of continuously expanding practical technologies that support socially vulnerable groups in preparation for the post-unification era. Bareun Jeom aims to become more than a simple braille conversion tool—it aspires to be an accessibility platform that helps visually impaired people in both Koreas read more information and better understand the world around them.

This article is a summary based on an interview shared in a video published on Unification Login, where CEO Jeongmin Oh—team lead of Team IroulE—spoke directly about the background behind planning Bareun Jeom, how he became the team lead, and why braille technology matters when preparing for reunification. In the video, he also shared the team’s guiding direction: to use technology to deliver practical help to socially vulnerable people.