FEATURE: South Korean workers learn AI after work, outpacing their companies

SEOUL - On a Tuesday night in April, seven office workers gathered around a table in a co-working space in southern Seoul, each having paid 70,000 won ($50) for a 90-minute, hands-on lesson on Claude Code, an agentic coding tool developed by U.S. AI company Anthropic.

Ok Ye Jin, 33, was among them. She works for a direct-to-consumer online store of a multinational brand's Korean unit. Ok said she signed up voluntarily to learn how to use the smart assistant, which designs computer programs based on users' descriptions of the features they want in natural language.