“Chingu-ya.” One word is enough.
A Korean-native voice AI checks on seniors every day, and notifies welfare workers and families the moment something changes. Built around 지역사회통합돌봄법, the Integrated Community Care Assistance Act that took effect March 2026. Backend, dashboard, family app, senior app deployed; 181 tests; PIPA verified.
The grandmother nobody calls.
2.13 million Korean seniors live alone. 32.6% have no daily conversation partner. In 2024, 3,924 solitary deaths were recorded in Korea. The country crossed the super-aged threshold (20%+ population 65+) in December 2024, a year ahead of projection.
Sources: KOSIS / 통계청, 65세 이상 1인가구 (one-person household tables) · 보건복지부 / MOHW, 노인실태조사 (National Survey of Older Koreans) · 보건복지부, 고독사 실태조사 2024 · 통계청, 2024 super-aged-society announcement. Full list →
Loneliness is a clinical risk factor: for cognition, for cardiovascular health, for the day someone falls without anyone knowing. The system tries. Welfare workers, weekly visits, ringtones from a city office. The math is impossible. The country needs a thousand more workers, today.
지역사회통합돌봄법 / the Integrated Community Care Assistance Act, effective March 2026, legally obligates municipalities to provide regular welfare monitoring for elderly residents living alone. They cannot hire enough welfare workers to comply manually. That is the demand-side push.
Chingu doesn’t replace the welfare worker. It holds the seat between visits. A Korean voice that calls every day. An alert when a day goes silent. A dashboard the welfare office can act on before the worst becomes the only signal left.
Loneliness shrinks when someone is next to you. Technology can hold that seat. At least until a human can. Ebenezer Tarubinga, founder
Five surfaces. Built for the senior, the family, the city.
Voice AI companion
Korean-native dialogue. Under 700 ms median response. On-device wake word. The senior speaks; Chingu listens.
Real-time alerts
Silence past 18 hours, distress markers, device offline. Alerts dispatch to family and welfare officer.
Family app
Daily summary, weekly mood trend, push notification when something changes. Korean and English.
Welfare dashboard
Caseworker view: senior list, district heatmap, daily check-in status, escalation queue.
Smart-home integration (in talks)
In conversation with Samsung SmartThings: lights, door, kettle. Chingu can speak through devices the senior already owns. Will be named on a real launch date, not a slide.
Dialect support
Gyeongsang, Jeolla, Chungcheong, Gangwon, Jeju. Corpus collection ongoing. The grandmother shouldn’t speak Standard to her friend.
living alone (KOSIS)
recorded in 2024
backend + 2 native apps
response time (p50)
Sources: KOSIS · MOHW 노인실태조사 · MOHW 고독사 실태조사 2024 · 700ms p50 measured internally on the staging build · tests passing on the deployed backend, dashboard, family app and senior app. Full citation list →
ko-KR-SunHiNeural with Naver Clova TTS reserved
Voice is biometric. We treat it that way.
Voice is a biometric under PIPA Article 23. Separate consent. Full encryption. Deletion on schedule. The right to walk away with everything erased.
개인정보 보호책임자. Ebenezer Tarubinga (interim, English-language). Korean-language DPO named with first municipal pilot. Full posture →
Biometric voice consent. Separate, opt-in, revocable.
AI identity disclosure. First-call script (Korean): “안녕하세요, 친구야 입니다. 저는 사람이 아니라 AI입니다.”
90-day auto-delete. Voice permanently deleted after 90 days unless the senior or family opts in.
AES-256-GCM on every stored voice clip and transcript.
All processing inside Korea (KISA-aligned providers). No cross-border transfer. Backup region named on contract.
Family app shows summaries, never raw audio. Audio access requires fresh consent each time.
Municipalities: municipalities@chingu-ai.ebstar.co · routed to a Korean-reading reviewer.
The honest version.
Pre-seed. Built end-to-end by one AI/ML engineer (MSc, Korea University). 181 tests passing. PIPA compliance verified. KISA cert in flight.
Deployed: Korean voice loop (ASR → LLM → TTS) · welfare dashboard (Next.js) · family app (React Native) · senior app (React Native) · alert routing + escalation · PIPA compliance (consent, encryption, audit log, deletion) · FCM push · SmartThings cloud connector · Toss Payments · dialect corpus collection (Gyeongsang first). 181 tests passing. Security hardening pass complete.
In conversation: three Korean municipalities (수도권 / 영남); one welfare NGO; a Samsung SmartThings partner team. We will name them on a real launch date, not a slide.
Korean entity registration in progress. Once 사업자등록번호 issues, three things switch on: KakaoTalk Alim Talk notifications, SMS fallback (Naver SENS), and KONEPS vendor registration. Email fallback (SendGrid) is active in the meantime. Privacy posture →
Not yet: paid pilot · KISA certification stamp · revenue · 사업자등록번호 (in flight) · full-time team beyond the founder.
The senior is not a user.
She’s a friend.
We don’t speak product about her. We don’t flatten her into a persona. She has a name, a kitchen, a daughter who calls less than she should, and a Saturday morning routine she’s kept for forty years. Chingu listens like that’s the case, because it is.