Labor ministry wins top innovation prize for in-house AI and detective training school

South Korea's labor ministry said Wednesday it won the grand prize at a government personnel-innovation competition for an in-house artificial intelligence agent built by its own staff, along with a silver award for a training program that simulates labor investigations.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor took the presidential award at the 21st Personnel Innovation Best Practices Competition for "Dowoori GPT," an AI agent it deployed on a secure internal network, and the prime minister's silver prize for its "Investigation School." It was the only central government body to win two or more awards.

Dowoori GPT is available to all 13,000 ministry employees, who use it to analyze and organize documents, handle routine administrative work and search case law. The tool cut the time needed to interview a complainant and draft a statement to 0.80 hours from 1.13 hours per case, and reduced the time to summarize and analyze statements to 1.00 hour from 1.51 hours. Labor law consultations offered around the clock in 34 languages were used 117,000 times in 2025. The department is also running "vibe coding" training and hackathon competitions to build internal AI skills.

The Investigation School was built by seven veteran labor inspectors, including supervisor Choi Jang-soon of the ministry's Chungju office, who analyzed 3.16 million filed complaints to identify eight core case types and develop 34 mock cases. New inspectors go through 12 weeks of training followed by 12 weeks of mentoring, and all 206 trainees were placed in the field as of July 27.

"At this year's personnel innovation competition, 'Dowoori GPT,' an AI developed by our own staff, won the grand prize, the presidential award, and the 'Investigation School,' created by seven veteran supervisors after analyzing 3.16 million cases, won the silver prize, the prime minister's award," Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon said.

The competition drew 119 entries from 63 central government agencies and public institutions across three categories — talent, workplace and institutional innovation.

The ministry said it will expand what it calls "labor AX," its push to apply AI across employment and labor administration, and plans to open a labor investigation training center in 2027 to extend mock-investigation and hands-on training to all inspectors.