Don't Panic Korea

What It Is

Don't Panic Korea helps foreigners in Korea find and read guides so they don't panic in front of unfamiliar systems such as visas, housing, banking, phones, healthcare and paperwork. It also gives them Korean sentences to read out on the spot. The "DON'T PANIC" spirit of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sets the product's voice, and it chooses to walk alongside calmly, one step at a time, rather than pile up information.

The Problem

Information foreigners meet when settling in Korea is broken up across government notices, old blog posts and scattered community answers. Even the same question, such as "what do I need for a studio lease?", has different answers depending on residence status, nationality and region, so search alone rarely finds the answer that fits your situation.

Getting a system, an amount or a deadline wrong can cost money or cause problems with residence status. That is why the service puts accurate answers ahead of fast ones.

Who It Is For

• Foreigners who just arrived or are about to: people taking first steps such as visas, finding a home and opening a bank account
• People whose procedure depends on their status: international students, working holiday participants and expatriate employees who need the procedure for their own status
• Residents stuck in a specific situation: people already living in Korea who got lost with phones, healthcare or paperwork

Core Flow

1. Find: look for the guide you need through twelve topics or search. If search does not catch it, describe what is happening in a sentence and find it by situation.
2. Read: start from the conclusion, then check what to do now, deadlines and what to bring.
3. Use it on the spot: tap to copy the Korean sentences to read at the counter, or print the guide and bring it.
4. Hand it to a person: for errands that are hard alone, request a Korean companion to go with you.

Key Features

• Nine-part guides: the conclusion, what to do now, deadlines, what to bring, the procedure, Korean to use on site, common traps, when it does not apply, and when you need a person. Empty parts are removed entirely so no filler paragraphs remain.
• On-site Korean: sentences to read at the counter can be copied with a tap, and unfamiliar terms come with Hangul, romanization and meaning side by side.
• Checked dates and official sources: every guide shows when it was last checked and links to the original government page.
• Find a guide by situation: write what you are going through in the box under the search results, and it picks matching guides from those already published. Signed-in users can use it up to twenty times a day.
• Print and PDF: print a guide to bring to the counter, with official sources and notices intact.
• English and Japanese: guides are written in Korean and translated into English and Japanese by people.

Product Decisions

• People write the guides: body text and translations are written and reviewed by people. Money and residence status are at stake, so generated sentences must not slip in.
• The finder only picks: the model behind finding by situation returns only the numbers of candidate guides. The titles and summaries on screen are from the guides themselves, and what you type is not kept on the server.
• The search box does not pose as an AI chat: search and situation finding look like tools for finding guides, so nobody mistakes them for a counseling window that writes answers.
• Empty parts are removed: the nine-part frame stays, but parts with nothing to say are dropped instead of left blank. Paragraphs written only to fill a frame waste the reader's time.
• Independence is stated: a notice that the service is unrelated to any government agency appears on screen and in print.
• Index the translations: the Korean original is kept for review, and the English and Japanese pages that foreigners actually search are public and indexed.

Revenue Model

Every guide is free to read without signing in. Money moves in two places.

• One ad slot: a single slot at the end of each guide, above the comments, connected to the family's shared ad sales (ads.mrlatte.net).
• Don't Panic Companion: a paid service where a Korean goes with you on errands that are hard to handle alone. You request it right from a guide's "when you need a person" part, and inquiries come in by a single email.

Next Hypotheses

• Which topics get the most companion requests from the "when you need a person" part, to shape the companion offer around those first.
• Whether finding by situation actually surfaces guides that search missed, and tuning its threshold to real results.
• Which language group beyond English and Japanese shows the most demand, to decide the next translation language.