Korea National Park Service adopts AI for wildlife monitoring and visitor guidance

The Korea National Park Service is implementing new artificial intelligence technologies to enhance park management and visitor services.

The service has developed ‘Vandal Lens AI’, an automated species identification system designed to analyze footage from approximately 1,300 unmanned sensor cameras located across national parks. The system can automatically identify 17 mammal species, including Asiatic black bears, foxes, and water otters. This automation is expected to reduce the time required to analyze 100,000 video clips from 208 days to just 8 hours, a 99% increase in efficiency. The agency plans to release the AI models on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub for use by domestic and international research institutions.

Additionally, the Korea National Park Service is collaborating with Goodgang Labs to develop an AI-based visitor guidance service. Using the agency’s mascot ‘Vandal-i’ as a 3D AI avatar, the service will provide hiking information, safety protocols, and facility details via mobile browsers. The avatar will support Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese, allowing visitors to interact through voice commands. Initial testing will take place at Bukhansan, Jirisan, and Geumjeongsan national parks to verify accuracy and usability before a potential nationwide rollout.