Gimpo Pairs AI Skills With Office Basics to Help Women Return to Work

Gimpo, a city west of Seoul, is training women who are re-entering the workforce to use artificial intelligence in everyday office tasks. A job-cooperation meeting held on October 21 at the Gimpo Women's New Job Center looked at how to match that training with real hiring needs.

AI Plus Office Basics

The Smart Office Worker course with AI runs from September 4 to November 4, takes 20 trainees and is free. It covers AI document writing, video and image editing, Excel, the Computer Skills Level 2 certificate, resume writing and interview coaching. Meeting participants raised ideas such as teaching prompt writing, strengthening Excel and ERP basics, and building portfolios from practice work. ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is software that manages a company's orders, inventory and accounting in one place.

The program fits the direction of Gimpo's ninth popularly elected administration, which took office on July 1, 2026 and stresses AI-era education, future high-tech industries and tailored welfare. It also echoes national policy, including the fourth basic plan on women's economic activity and career-break prevention for 2025 to 2029. But it is not a new pledge of the current administration, nor a regional branch of the central government's AI specialist programs, which train developers rather than office workers.

Women's job returns also depend on more than skills. In the first half of 2025, Korea counted 1.105 million career-break women aged 15 to 54, and childcare was the top reason at 44.3 percent. Commuting, childcare and workplace conditions therefore matter as much as training.

The article's central test is what happens after class: whether graduates land jobs related to their training, keep good working conditions and stay employed. Hiring commitments have not yet been confirmed.

Why It Matters

Gimpo's approach shows how local training can connect national employment policy to real local jobs. Its value will be judged by actual hiring and job retention for returning women, not by direction alone.

Read the original article in Korean: K trendy NEWS