“Hi, I’m Min-ji So, an author who captures the daily moments of a deaf mother and her hearing child through illustrations.”
Instagram webtoon creator Min-ji So uses her drawings to share the information she once struggled to find as a Deaf parent raising a hearing child. In a world where access to information is uneven and social constraints persist, she chose webtoons as her medium of communication. Today, nearly 5,000 readers follow her stories. Through this unique language of her own, she has found a way to truly connect with the world.
Growing Up in a World Built Around Sound
“Number 25! Please stand up and read page 75. Who’s number 25?”
Min-ji So’s childhood looked markedly different from today. Whenever her name was called in class, she had to rely on the classmate sitting next to her. She remembers the world as one shaped by a society built around hearing. To engage with that world, she depended on others for connection. For a long time, instead of dreaming about bridging that divide, she chose to quietly accept reality and focus on adapting to it.
She eventually let go of her childhood love for drawing and began working as a sign language interpreter in Seoul. Then ten years ago, she left that job and, later in life, took the bold step of becoming a webtoon creator. But on this new journey, she once again found herself facetoface with the limits of language.
A Deaf creator confronting the walls of language
“Did you know that many Deaf Koreans struggle with reading and writing in Korean?”
Most people assume that being Deaf simply means not being able to hear. Yet many Deaf individuals also face challenges with reading and writing Korean. For them, sign language is their first language, while Korean can feel almost foreign. Subtle distinctions—such as “몰라 (I don’t know),” “모르지 (You don’t know, right?),” and “모르더라 (they don’t know)”—can be especially hard to grasp. The same goes for onomatopoeia and mimetic words that appear constantly in everyday speech.
But to create a webtoon, she had no choice but to tell her stories in Korean. Even one awkward expression could break the reader’s immersion. As she worked, she realized that the limits of language often became the limits of creativity. She also discovered that many aspiring Deaf creators faced the same challenges.
When you aren’t fully comfortable with Korean, you inevitably rely on others to refine your script. But timely feedback isn’t always available, and the waiting breaks your creative flow. For many Deaf artists, this language barrier becomes yet another wall, making it harder to continue creating on their own.
To address this problem, a peer feedback system was created in which Deaf creators helped refine one another’s work. But it lasted less than a year. Writers with strong grammar skills were quickly inundated with requests, exposing the flaws of a system that relied too heavily on a small group and ultimately revealing its unsustainability.
Beyond Limits: AI Opens a New Dimension of Creativity
Confronted with these struggles, she began to explore new possibilities with AI. She first encountered conversational AI last year, about six months after it had entered everyday life. Then a sudden thought crossed her mind:
“What if AI could fix Korean grammar?”
She had long carried this possibility in her heart. In May, she finally had the chance to turn it into reality by joining the Microsoft AI for Impact program. Reflecting on that moment, she says:
“Seeing how deeply Deaf creators longed to express themselves freely and independently, I felt compelled to help address the challenges they face.”
Working with AI, however, was far from simple. The hardest part was learning how to ask the right questions. At first, she communicated with AI using simple commands like ‘do this,’ ‘not like that,’ or ‘try a different topic.’ But such basic instructions fell short for creative work, and the AI often produced responses that missed the mark.
“Think of AI as a professor.”
A mentor’s advice made her pause and reflect on the conversations she had with AI. Good answers require good questions. Just as you would with a professor, you need to ask specifically—for example, ‘I tried this approach, but it still doesn’t work. Is there a better method?’
But for Deaf creators—many of whom experience Korean almost like a foreign language—posing detailed questions to AI and genuinely collaborating with it is extremely challenging. She realized that if AI was to serve as a true creative tool, this issue had to be addressed before anything else.
Through the Microsoft AI for Impact program, she discovered her breakthrough: learning how to harness Microsoft Copilot.
The program, AI-based capacity empowerment project designed for social enterprises and nonprofits, offered step-by-step support—from basic education to expert mentoring and hands-on training.
In 2024 alone, approximately 12,000 people joined the foundational sessions, 30 teams enrolled in the intensive program, and five projects were developed into real AI agents.
By the end of the program, she had developed an AI agent called the ‘Webtoon Storyboard Assistant,’ designed to support Deaf creators.
She recalls her first collaboration with Copilot:
“It felt as though I had finally gained a new creative assistant.”
At first, she expected nothing more than grammar corrections. But Copilot went beyond that—it unlocked her creative flow. By asking unexpected questions, it helped her spark new ideas and tell her stories more freely as a webtoon creator.
“I want to add a scene showing conflict between characters.”
When she asked this, Copilot didn’t just respond with options A, B, and C. Instead, it asked more creative prompts: “Describe the emotions in a novelistic style” or “Express the feeling as if it were a drama script, with heightened tension.” This approach helped her imagine richer, more vivid scenes.
Through her exchanges with Copilot, her stories and storyboards grew more creative and polished. At the same time, her sentences were automatically refined into natural, wellstructured Korean. Even details she once agonized over—expressions, character poses, background art—became easier to resolve. Background work that had previously taken hours was now completed in a fraction of the time.
“AI can truly enhance your creative power.”
Through this process, she gained confidence that deaf creators can expand their ideas freely, without hesitation. She witnessed firsthand that they could create stories that were not only more imaginative but also more polished. Above all, she realized that collaboration with AI begins with asking the right questions.
AI That First Asks Deaf Creators
Through this process, she arrived at one crucial question:
“How can Deaf creators make effective use of AI?”
She understood how challenging it was for Deaf creators to frame detailed questions in Korean. Her solution was to reverse the direction of questioning:
“What if the AI asked them first?”
This shift in thinking soon led to the development of an AI agent for Deaf creators. The AI begins by asking questions, and the creator simply answers. From those responses, it automatically generates the story outline and storyboard, while also making the sentences grammatically polished and natural.
By using this AI, the webtoon creation process became dramatically simpler. Compared to the old workflow, which required multiple rounds of feedback, the new approach enhanced not only efficiency but also the overall quality of the storytelling.
“Don’t Just Look at Grammar—See the Whole Story”
In other words, it was important to shift our perspective and truly see the forest for the trees. Grammar is only one part of the picture. What truly mattered was enabling Deaf creators to express their stories freely. That, more than anything, was the essential foundation for supporting their creative work. Through this process, she experienced a new dimension where creativity expands and intensifies through collaboration with AI.
“The best part is that I no longer have to ask anyone for help.”
This was the response of one Deaf creator who tested her AI agent.
With it, Deaf creators can now write freely, visualize their ideas, and craft their stories entirely on their own.
A Belief in Independence, Expanded into AI Education
Her journey naturally expanded into teaching others how to harness AI. In November, she organized and led her first AI workshop in a classroom in Seongdong-gu, Seoul.
Seven aspiring Deaf and hard-of-hearing creators attended, asking questions with confidence and participating enthusiastically until the very end.
“I’ve witnessed many peers abandon their dreams of becoming webtoon creators after hitting the harsh limits of reality.”
But now, through the AI education program she designed and personally teaches, she can share the possibilities she discovered. She hopes to continue passing on this experience so that Deaf creators facing similar challenges can find hope: “With AI, you can overcome limitations.”
AI Connecting More Stories to the World
“There are very few Deaf webtoon creators —it’s extremely rare.”
She acknowledged that not everyone can fully understand the challenges she faces. But she added,
“But for those who are living through it, these difficulties aren’t mere frustrations.”
She believes that social barriers are nothing more than frameworks built around the majority. In reality, everyone lives differently, and our languages do, too. What she hopes for is a world where this simple truth is embraced naturally.
AI has become a bridge, enabling Deaf creators to step beyond barriers that once felt insurmountable and opening new pathways to communicate with the world. For her, a door has finally opened to share her story widely and to communicate in a way that feels whole and true.
She closes with a firm message.
“I hope Deaf creators can move beyond creative limits and share their stories with confidence, with AI as their assistant. And I hope AI will help connect many more people’s stories to the world.”