Jan 5, 2026 Jan 5, 2026 2026-01-05

5 years ago I started to learn Korean. All by myself while still living in Portugal and having a full time job. The reason: I was really, really curious to see how my 2 books translated in Korean are actually sounding. This intention evolved over the next few years in one of the most interesting (if not the MOST interesting) times of my life.

Let’s take things slowly.

Switching Events

To make a potentially long story short, after learning Hangul for about 1 year, I decided to travel to Korea to get my level 1 Korean certification, called TOPIK. I booked a hotel room, an airplane ticket, and one sunny May morning, I just went there. I put aside about 2 weeks to adjust to the time difference and overall local conditions. A couple of days after my arrival, I went to visit the exam location and checked the lists, to see if my name was there. It was, so all was good.

Feeling encouraged, I stepped a little bit out of my comfort zone and went to try some local Korean meetups. After one or two, I stumbled upon a very interesting one, which was somehow related to an upcoming hackathon. The problem? That hackathon was on the same day as my exam.

Still, I wanted to see what the whole event was about, so I attended the meetup. It turned out that it was part of a longer series of 3 meetups, where people interested in the hackathon can get to know each other, and start team formation. On a sudden impulse, I decided to participate and started to form my team.

The Actual Event

After the next 2 team formation events, I was registered to the hackathon, with a team of 3 (not much, but also not too little) and I was 100% out of the TOPIK exam. My initial rationale was that a TOPIK exam can also be taken in the fall – TOPIK exams are held twice a year – whereas that hackathon seemed to be a one off. Eventually, I ditched the TOPIK exam entirely.

The hackathon – named Glitch, for reasons not very clear to me – was not in Seoul, but in Incheon, about 40 minutes by train, and it was supposed to last an entire weekend. I took the train one rainy morning and met my other 2 team members there. Somehow, during the onboarding hours, a 4th member was added to the team. I was the only coder, the rest of the team was mainly design, social media or business.

The location was in the Hana financial town, a very big area containing event rooms, catering areas and even rooms to spend the night (the hackathon was supposed to last 2 days). Just going around every part of the location would take about 1 hour. And the total number of participants was 400. I was the only foreigner.

The hackathon started around 9 PM. The other members of the team, all Korean, started to mingle around, while I decided to stay at my desk and keep hacking. The project that I was competing with was a small game called Flippando. The night that followed, as well as most of the next day, I had little contact with the members of my team. But the coding was going quite well, so nothing to worry about.

With a few hours before the end, I met my team members again, and we decided on a small presentation strategy. They drafted a keynote, I made a small demo, and, when the time came to present in front of the jury, we were ready. The presentation was held in English, and, as far as I could tell, it went quite ok.

The Grand Finale

After the presentation, there was a 4-hour judging interval. As I was walking around the corridors, trying to rest my eyes a little bit, one of the jury members approached me and told me we won a track prize already, and we were in the grand finale. The top 10 projects winning individual tracks were also competing for the grand finale.

Very excited, I called my team members, and told them we won the Polygon track. In less than 1 minute, everybody gathered and they started to work frantically on the grand finale presentation.

Everybody gathered in the big event room and we waited for our turn. I went on the stage, and gave another presentation, still in English. It also went quite ok. In about 10 minutes, the judges deliberated and the big winner was announced. It wasn’t us, but we still kept the big Polygon number one prize.

After pictures and a little bit of back and forth, everybody got on the train and we got back in Seoul.

The Takeaways

Going over what I wrote above, it looks almost like news in a newspaper. It doesn’t capture the emotion and the happiness we experienced when we learned that we won. But maybe it’s better like this. It’s also quite aligned with the Asian, more composed way to behave. And it has just enough details, not too much, not too little.

Now, to honor the title, how do you actually win a hackathon in South Korea?

Well, in no particular order:

• make sure you attend one, first. It may sound dumb, but remember I had to take a big decision, to ditch the TOPIK exam for this. In the end, the game became relatively popular, and it also generated a little bit of revenue, significantly more than the hackathon prize
• make sure you give your best. I could have just linger around, like many of the other contestants, who treated the event more like a networking opportunity, rather than a contest. But I didn’t. I stayed there and coded for around 30 hours.
• practice your presentation skills. Coding is important, but what got the attention of the jury was the clean, but compelling presentation I crafted with my team members
• be lucky. I know, I know, but that’s the truth. At the end of the day, you really need a bit of luck. There’s no bulletproof strategy for winning a hackathon. I learned that the hard way, after participating in a few others – without winning anything, of course.