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DISCOVERING OUR CEO : Tom, CEO of HelloFriends Co.

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Knowing a company service is important but also knowing who is behind it is even better. Today, we wanted to introduce you to the CEO of HelloFriends company, the creator of Vizabridge Corporation service : Tom (Kang Dongshin).


Could you introduce yourself and the company ?


My name is Tom, the CEO of HelloFriends. I’m operating the Vizabridge service which is helping foreigners to come to Korea no matter if it is through a student visa, job-seeking visa or a startup visa.


  • The company origins :


I was a school manager for 7 years and an accountant in school. When I worked in university, many of our foreign students had difficulties to get relevant administrative information.

Since I was one of the only ones in the financial department being able to speak English, my team leader asked me to help the foreign students in order to assist them during the creation of Korean bank account and card.

At that moment, I became aware of the huge information gap that exist between the Korean administration and foreign students.


I was very shocked.


I realised that many students have to pay a big amount of money in order to come to Korea. Most of them paid an exorbitant loan without knowing that the university was actually providing a school agency that didn’t require any service fee.

I grasped that if we provide precise information to them, they will not encounter as much difficulties as they were.


Around 1,000 foreign university students from Vietnam came to Korea by taking out a loan with a broker. They worked every night while studying to reimburse the loan.

The problem is : they were not and are stil not legally allowed to work due to their student visa status. They could only work as part-time workers (around 15 to 20 hours a week).

They worked almost 40h per week without knowing it.


After graduating from university, their alien card (ARC) registered with D-2 and D-4 visa (student visa) was canceled and 30% of them became illegal residents. Then, they started to work in companies without getting the right payment.

In the end, the police caught them, forcing them to go back to their country.


If those students knew that, after graduation, they could get a D-10 visa (job-seeking visa) and then an E-7 visa (specific activities visa), work in a good company and establish their career here in Korea, they would not have to get through all of this.


In order to prevent them to get through similar situations, I decided to create an AI-based solution along with a developer team, Vizabridge.


  • The company today :


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Today, we are providing services that fit a large scale of profiles. Students, job-seekers and most importantly entrepreneurs. This is the essence of Vizabridge Corporation.


Our strategy is mainly focused on two things : building trust and expanding step by step.

We build trust not only on online partnerships (social media) but also on offline ones. Educational sessions or visa-related seminars, we are meeting every foreigners who encounter difficulties and take notes of their feedback and experience to improve our service.


Of course, there are already government websites and official portals that provide information. But in reality, it’s difficult for foreigners to find information that actually matches their personal situation, and even harder to connect that information to the real administrative process.

This is what we do today, connecting foreigners and the Korean administration through the bridge that we created : Vizabridge Corporation.


How was it to create your own company after working as an accountant for 7 years ?


After 7 years, I left my post and made my own company in 2023. At that time, the main issue of the company was that we targeted foreigners by making several services : Jobbridge, MangoBee, Mart, Homebridge, and many others.

After concertation, we decided to concentrate our efforts on developing our current two main services : Vizabridge and Vizabridge Corporation.


Even though not all of the services we made were conclusive, I found this experience very helpful. I learned to focus on more precise services.

Of course, we did not give up on the former services, we are simply studying the market before developing them fully in the future.


As for today, 2026, we are surrounded by a very good developper team which allows us to launch a service in a very short amount of time as soon as we are ready.


What do you think about your career for now ?

How do you feel about your past achievements and challenges?


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I feel like I'm growing very fast everyday. Making a new service and testing it, updating it and processing it… every step is very helpful to me. There's nothing that can give me more insights. Everyday, every night, I’m always thinking about how to help foreigners. As everyday is different, it is very exciting for me.


Indeed, a new service always brings new problems but it also brings new solutions.

When I was an employee, I was afraid to tackle every occurring problem. Today, I can say that I changed. The HelloFriends team and I are now the problem solvers.


What about the future ?

Your future as a CEO and the future of the company ?


I have a very detailed schedule. This Vizabridge and Vizabridge Cooperation services are very popular and many governments want to contract a partnership with us.

Our principal goal is to provide a service that takes fully care of all the administrative part of building a company in South Korea for foreign entrepreneurs in order to let them focus entirely on their business. We are currently running pilot tests for this service.


In the long run, we also plan to expand more into B2B and B2G SaaS subx-x-x-x-x-scription models. We are especially focusing on partnerships with institutions that support large numbers of international students and foreign workers because we believe that it will help us build a more stable and recurring business structure.

At the same time, we are also expanding both our development and operations teams.

Our goal is to strengthen both of those services together so that platform growth and revenue growth continuously reinforce each other.


Ultimately, we want to reduce the burden foreign founders face in the early stages and help them settle and grow more stably in Korea.


What is fulfilling your life right now ?


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Before I raised the startup, I had many hobbies. Now, I don't really have the time for them. However, I'm still very excited.

I would say that the one thing that is fulfilling my life right now is when customers call me and tell me that using Vizabridge services was very helpful, that's my biggest satisfaction. When you make a company, this is a normal thing.


Viabridge Corporation is a service that helps foreign entrepreneurs to settle in South Korea. By creating HelloFriends company and the Vizabridge services, Tom aimed to create a safe bridge made of colourful stones to connect Korea to the rest of the world.



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