AI Korean Saju, Globally — Press Materials

Deokhoon Hong is the founder and CEO of KunStudio, the Seoul-based independent software studio behind Cheonmyeongdang. A career software engineer turned solo founder, Deokhoon built KunStudio in 2026 around a simple thesis: Korean cultural depth, when paired with AI precision, can travel globally without losing its soul.

Born in Gyeongju — the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom and a city whose every street corner is a reminder that Korean civilization has been doing meaning-making for fifteen centuries — Deokhoon grew up reading the same Saju almanacs his grandmother used to plan family decisions. He spent his twenties shipping consumer apps, observing that Western horoscope apps reached hundreds of millions of users while the deeper Korean Four Pillars tradition remained locked behind language barriers, paywalled scholar interviews, and Korean-only software.

Cheonmyeongdang is his answer. The product fuses a verified Saju engine — true-solar time correction, 24 Solar Terms (Jeolgi), Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Earthly Branches, Five Elements (Wu Xing), Ten Gods (Sip-sin), and Yongsin (Use-God) — with Claude AI as a cultural-translation layer. Users get the rigor of a Korean Saju master and the accessibility of a chat interface, in their own language.

Beyond Cheonmyeongdang, KunStudio operates a portfolio of culturally-rooted AI products spanning Korean tax guidance (Sekum-N-Hyetaek), Korean travel intelligence (KORLENS), and AI music (Sori Atlas). Deokhoon writes occasionally about Korean culture, AI product design, and the ethics of bringing ancient traditions into algorithmic form. He lives in Seoul.