'Boss, here's how to use AI': KOTRA has junior staff mentor executives

Employees at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency with an average age of 28 are becoming mentors to the agency's top brass — including President Kang Kyung-sung. The initiative, known as reverse mentoring, has junior staff teach executives directly about AI tools, generational communication styles and what young people care about.

KOTRA announced Monday it is launching the program for the first time, running five months from this month through the end of the year.

Conventional in-house mentoring passes workplace experience from senior employees down to junior ones; this program flips that dynamic. Twenty-two entry-level employees serve as mentors, while seven executives — including President Kang — take on the role of mentees.

The junior employees are divided into seven groups of three to four people. Each group meets with an executive in person once a month to discuss topics such as AI, communication and the latest trends.

No single executive is paired with the same group throughout. A rotating system assigns different mentor groups to different executives each month, ensuring that leadership hears from a wide range of young employees over the course of the program.

AI is the most heavily featured subject. Executives work alongside employees using generative AI tools the staff already rely on daily, learning how to apply them for greater efficiency. Sessions also include hands-on practice with AI-powered video creation and other practical applications.

The program also addresses cross-generational communication. Participants share recently coined slang and the conversational styles younger employees prefer. Executives get a taste of hobbies and cultural trends popular among younger workers, including "malang-i" stress-relief toys and keycap customization — a hobby in which keyboard key covers are swapped out and personalized to individual taste.

The first reverse-mentoring session was held Aug. 10. KOTRA said it plans to go beyond simply exposing executives to youth culture, incorporating the insights and AI techniques gathered from the sessions into its export and investment support operations as well as its broader organizational management.

"The fresh sensibility, communication skills and AI capabilities of our young employees will be a core driver in raising the quality of KOTRA's services," President Kang said. "Through reverse mentoring, we will engage with junior staff in an open and candid way, and executives will actively apply the insights gained to management across the board — strengthening the support we provide to businesses."