AI Designs, Humans Manage…—The Gap in EdTech That Mildang PT Has Exploited

Digital Transformation Extends to Learning “Management”... Combining AI and Personalized Tutoring
Course Completion Rate Rises from 13% to 96%... Cumulative Investment Reaches 95.4 Billion Won

Artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes students’ weaknesses to create study plans, while human instructors ensure students complete their assigned work. This is what sets “Mil-dang PT,” a one-on-one online personal tutoring service operated by the edtech company I Hate Flying Bugs (IHFB), apart from existing online education platforms.

Founded in January 2012, IHFB was born out of the belief that “only humans can ensure students stick with their studies until the very end.” The company aims to refine its educational services by distinguishing between areas that require human involvement and those that can be handled by AI, and to scale these services online to narrow the “educational gap” caused by factors such as income and place of residence.

Since launching an adaptive learning service called “Mil-dang English” in 2013, IHFB has expanded its business for over a decade with the mission of “equal access to high-quality educational opportunities.” Its current flagship service is Mil-dang PT.

Mil-dang PT focuses on the “power to motivate students to study”—an issue that existing edtech companies have struggled to resolve. Although an environment has been established where students can watch lectures and solve problems anytime, anywhere with just a mobile device, getting students to sit at their desks and complete the prescribed amount of work remains a challenge for the education industry.

Unlike content that users seek out voluntarily, such as Netflix or YouTube, it is difficult for educational services to ensure that users study consistently from the outset. This is because, no matter how high-quality the lectures and content may be, it is difficult to achieve learning outcomes if students do not actually study.

Mil-dang PT has addressed this very issue. While existing edtech companies have focused on digitizing individual functions of the learning process—such as problem-solving, error logs, and personalized problem recommendations—Mil-dang PT has devoted its efforts to the digital transformation (DX) of the “management” aspect: keeping students at their desks and ensuring they follow the planned curriculum.

The key lies in the division of roles between AI and humans. While AI analyzes a student’s learning level and weaknesses to provide a personalized curriculum, a “personal tutor” meets with the student remotely to manage their progress and study habits. This structure leverages AI to enhance the efficiency of personalized education, while humans take on the role of ensuring that actual learning continues.

It’s essentially an adaptation to learning of the approach used by personal trainers (PTs) when they create workout plans and ensure clients complete their prescribed exercise routines. The service goes beyond simply providing content to students; it bundles the entire process—from ensuring they actually start studying to seeing them through to completion—into a single service.

Results are already showing. According to Mil-dang PT’s official website, the course completion rate—which stood at just 13% when the service first launched—has risen to 96% in just three years. Building on the learning management expertise and digital transformation capabilities in education accumulated over the past seven years of operating the service, the company has secured cumulative investments totaling 95.4 billion won.

The core issue in the market that Mil-dang PT ultimately aims to address is the “education gap.” The company’s vision is to use online education to mitigate the structural problems of the domestic private education market, where even among middle and high school students, the quality of education available varies depending on parental income or place of residence.

According to data presented on Mil-dang PT’s website, the Daechi and Mokdong districts have a combined student population of 89,435, with an average household income of 85.22 million won. In the Seoul metropolitan area, these figures were 1,156,539 students and 54.49 million won, respectively, while in regional areas, they were 1,526,890 students and 46.30 million won. The company believes that the private education environment available to students can vary depending on their region and household income.

Mil-Dang PT has adopted a strategy to enhance the quality of lectures, management, assessment, and content while simultaneously standardizing and scaling these services online. The company aims to reduce disparities in educational access based on region and income by offering educational services comparable to those provided by Daechi-dong academies or tutors from SKY universities (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University) at more reasonable prices.

Moving high-quality, offline-focused private education online eliminates geographical limitations while securing price competitiveness through economies of scale. The model utilizes AI to reduce the costs associated with personalized education for each student and combines this with human supervision to address the low learning persistence often cited as a weakness of online education.

This business model has also attracted interest from the capital markets and the existing education industry. According to a media report, following its Series C investment of 30 billion won in 2022, IHFB received approximately 10 billion won in investment last year from major domestic education companies such as Megastudy, Mirae N, Ddimdol, and YBM. The cumulative investment raised to date has reached 95.4 billion won.

In particular, the fact that not only financial investors but also established education companies have joined as strategic investors demonstrates the scalability of the technology and learning management model developed by Mildaeng PT. It has also laid the groundwork for combining the technological capabilities accumulated in the online education market with the content and business expertise possessed by established education companies.

Ultimately, the business model IHFB is envisioning can be summarized as “education designed by AI and managed by people.” It is a structure that uses AI to enhance the efficiency of personalized education while people ensure learning continuity; at the same time, it scales this model online to secure price competitiveness.

It remains to be seen how much Mil-dang PT—which has gone a step beyond simply moving educational content online to digitally transform “management” as well—can narrow the chronic educational disparities in the domestic private education market through this combination of technology and human expertise.

Source: WikiLeaks Korea (https://www.wikileaks-kr.org)