International students flock to Yonsei University for tech career day

Daniel Seokho Yoon, CEO of DayTrip, talks during the Tech Tide career day event at Yonsei University in Seodaemun District, western Seoul, on Saturday. [LEE TAE-HEE]

International students interested in working in tech, UX and UI gathered at Yonsei University on Saturday for a career day event, meeting company representatives and aiming to secure internships through networking.

Around 100 students attended Tech Tide, an event hosted by the Yonsei-Indonesia Association, at the university's Sinchon campus in Seodaemun District, western Seoul.

Tech Tide is the association's second career networking event, following the first one hosted in October last year. This year's event focused more on inviting tech, UX and UI-related companies such as Naver Cloud, Hyundai Mobis and Saltcake.

Attending students were able to listen to short presentations about each company, then split into smaller groups for in-depth sessions with companies of their interest.

Among the attendees, DayTrip Korea offered six-week summer internship opportunities, meeting students at the event for interviews.

The company operates the DayTrip application, which curates places worth visiting, recommended by locals. It's currently using a beginner-level AI curation model and expects to implement a fully integrated one in the fall.

Companies like Gentle Monster, an eyewear brand, may not seem like a tech-heavy company, but they have a large demand for talent in those fields.

Its flagship stores aren't just places that sell products but are built like huge art exhibits featuring kinetic installations and robots created by the company.

"Internally within our company, we have our own robotics team," said Najwa Azwan, global branding communications and planning manager at Gentle Monster. "The robotics and spatial design team is actually bigger than the product development team, which shows that branding and customer experience are actually much more important than the product we are delivering."

Hyundai Mobis also attended the event, stressing that a large portion of its employees are based abroad. Out of its 40,000 employees, around 10,000 are based in Korea, while the rest work at global offices and production bases.

"We are also reinforcing the global R&D network, and nowadays there are many more workers in our global factories and R&D centers, which are about 30,000 people," said Lee Hae-uk, a research engineer at Hyundai Mobis.

"I see a lot of people from all around the globe, and I can proudly say that students here can also be among those who can work in Hyundai Mobis' global network."

BY LEE TAE-HEE [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]