Who I am
I'm Areum Seo — a localization professional, linguist, and builder working across Korean, Japanese, and English. I came to Tokyo on a MEXT scholarship, took a master's in applied linguistics at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and taught Japanese at Waseda and Korean at JCFL before moving into industry. Teaching is where I learned to explain a system to someone who has never seen it — which turns out to be most of what I still do.
Since then my work has spanned localization QA, translation, project management, and language operations, across linguistics, gaming, technical documentation, marketing, and entertainment — including a stretch at Amazon Japan, where I received a Customer Obsession Award. Most recently I stood in the experience zone at Snowflake World Tour Seoul demoing CoWork to visitors: same instinct as the classroom, shorter attention span.
Lately I've been building: Python, SQL, Streamlit, Snowflake, GitHub, and a handful of iOS apps. I hold a SnowPro Associate certification and keep picking up credentials in data engineering and generative AI along the way. I don't call myself a developer yet — but I ship things, and I keep going.
What I've built
Find Your Sole
A personalized shoe recommendation service for running shoes and everyday comfort shoes. Answer a few questions about your feet, lifestyle, and budget — get matched with the right shoe, explained by AI. Now a responsive web app that works the same on desktop and mobile, with Korean and English throughout. Built mainly with Claude Code, with Codex as a second pair of eyes.
Stockpulse Select
A dashboard for discovering, comparing and keeping an eye on Korean and US stocks and ETFs. Claude proposes candidates and writes the notes, but every price and return is verified against Naver Finance data, so invented tickers never reach the screen. Compare up to four holdings on normalized performance, volatility and drawdown, with a what-if simulation drawn from three years of daily closes. Runs in the browser on desktop and mobile, in Korean and English — sign-in is invite-only while it’s a prototype. Built the same way: mainly Claude Code, with some Codex.
Alliegent
A personal AI agent that manages weekly schedules, tracks projects, and reports to Discord. Runs a Discord bot and task scheduler in a single asyncio loop — automating daily briefs, AI news digests, overdue alerts, and weekly reviews. Mention it in chat to add tasks or check your schedule in Korean or English.
Moon Rabbit’s Way Home
A Chuseok runner game in the spirit of the Chrome dino. Help the moon rabbit get home for the holiday by jumping over relatives’ nagging — “Married yet?”, “How much do you make?” — and grabbing songpyeon along the way. Built in a day with Claude Code as a single HTML file, with Korean and English versions localized rather than translated so every nag lands in both languages, plus shareable score cards.
Experience
Localization Project Management
Managing multilingual workflows, stakeholder expectations, quality processes, and delivery timelines across languages and teams.
Translation, Interpretation & Achievement
Cross-lingual communication work across Korean, Japanese, and English — review, adaptation, and quality improvement.
Browse archive →Tool Building & Automation
Bringing structured PM thinking into practical tooling — building utilities that make language work less painful and more trackable.
Publications & Research
Academic work in linguistics, language education, and assessment — developed during graduate study in Tokyo.
Browse archive →Media & Reporting
Tokyo correspondent work and selected video reporting. Language-first coverage of culture, society, and place.
Browse archive →