[AI Revolution](103) Perfect Recognition of Cursive Documents... OCR Technology Leader 'Romin'

Interview with Kang Ji-hong, CEO of Romin
Leading the AI-powered OCR Technology Market

Kang Ji-hong, CEO of Romin, is giving an interview to Asia Economy at the company headquarters in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the 30th. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

With the advent of the digital transformation era, the need for building and utilizing big data is increasing across many industries. Today, much data is produced and stored in a digital device- and media-friendly manner, but in the past, printed materials were the primary form of data production and storage for a long time. Therefore, the demand for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to utilize the vast amount of printed materials accumulated over a long period as big data is also increasing. OCR is a technology that converts printed documents into digital image files. There is a company leading the market in Korea using AI-based OCR technology, drawing attention. That company is Romin.

On the 7th, Kang Ji-hong, CEO of Romin, met with Asia Economy and said, "I have long pondered how to make document work more efficient and automated, which led to the conception of a technology called 'Document AI.' We are currently advancing the technology by creating a platform that allows companies worldwide to easily automate document work."

Romin’s flagship service is ‘TextScope Studio.’ This is a platform that automatically processes and utilizes document data. Using OCR supported by the latest AI technologies such as deep learning-based computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP), it identifies and classifies documents and extracts only the data necessary for work accurately and quickly. It converts various types of documents into usable data formats and supports implementing document processing automation in the most efficient way. Additionally, it provides various linked AI technologies to make the converted data even more valuable.

The greatest advantage of TextScope Studio is its high recognition rate. It recognizes low-resolution, low-quality documents and handwritten documents with high accuracy. It boasts a printed text recognition rate of 98.07%, handwritten detection performance of 98.38%, and typewritten text recognition rate of 98.3%.

Kang Ji-hong, CEO of Romin, is giving an interview to Asia Economy at the company building in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the 30th. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

CEO Kang explained, "Character recognition technology is an old technology, but the application of deep learning is relatively recent. Since 2016, we have focused on technologies utilizing deep learning and have been continuously researching and developing."

Based on its technological capabilities, Romin is building trust through collaboration with leading domestic financial companies. Romin’s technology is applied in KakaoBank’s non-face-to-face mortgage loans. It automatically recognizes various documents such as registration certificates, ID cards, seal certificates, and employment certificates to process information. In the case of KB Kookmin Card, Romin’s technologies are used not only for customer ID verification but also in the credit card merchant screening process.

CEO Kang said, "The financial industry handles a lot of B2C work, so it processes the most documents among various industries. There is inevitably a high demand for document work automation. From a cost-saving perspective, labor costs can be significantly reduced, so many financial companies use our technology."

Romin is also advancing its personal information protection technology. Recently, it launched the AI-based personal information filtering and de-identification solution service ‘TextScope PrivacyGuard.’ This personal information detection and de-identification solution accurately detects personal information in image documents or text documents containing images and provides de-identification functions tailored to the purpose. It can accurately detect personal information written in graphic fonts and handwriting, even in low-resolution images. For example, if a resident registration number is identified, it is automatically masked.

CEO Kang predicted, "Recently, incidents where personal information such as names, resident registration numbers, and addresses are exposed without masking have frequently occurred. Along with government-affiliated institutions, personal information security will become even more important for major platform companies and the financial sector."

One of CEO Kang’s goals for this year is to enter the English-speaking market. He said, "The value of the services we provide lies in saving labor costs and time. Therefore, we expect high demand in English-speaking countries such as the US and Europe, so-called wealthy countries, where labor costs are high."