I thought I knew English. Then someone spoke to me.

I’m Korean, so I studied English for most of my school years. I thought I was good at it. My test scores seemed to prove it. I got a near-perfect score on the English section of the Korean SAT and did well on tests like TOEIC.

Then I arrived in the United States for the first time. At a Subway restaurant, I froze. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could barely understand what the person behind the counter was asking me.

Instead of answering, I pointed. I pointed at the bread, the meat, the vegetables, basically everything. I had spent most of my life studying English, yet I couldn’t order one sandwich with confidence.

My roommates also made fun of me when I couldn’t follow their conversations. I laughed with them, but it hurt.

All my confidence disappeared. I knew words and grammar, but none of that helped when another person was waiting for my answer.

That made me angry.

For a while, I blamed myself. Then I realized the problem was bigger than me. I was angry that you could study a language for years and still not be able to have a real conversation.

We pick up our first language from family and friends. We listen, copy, make mistakes, and speak long before anyone asks us to explain a grammar rule. But school had taught me to do the opposite: read first, memorize one grammar rule after another, and wait until some distant day when I was finally “ready” to speak.

Grammar and reading still matter. But I had spent years preparing for conversation instead of actually having one.

Years later, I saw the same problem in Korea. I used to run a 3,000-member community for expats in Seoul. Friends who had studied Korean for years would sometimes use phrases like “실례합니다” or “천만에요” in everyday conversations.

Those phrases weren’t wrong. But they often sounded like textbook Korean, not like the way friends usually talk. My friends had learned what a lesson told them to say, but not always what people around them were really saying.

Many had studied at Korean language schools for years but still struggled to speak at work. Korean companies didn’t just want people who knew grammar points. They wanted people who could join a meeting, understand their coworkers, and answer in real time.

Some eventually had to leave Korea. Watching that happen made me realize this was much bigger than my embarrassing moment at Subway.

I looked for better options. Language exchange sounded like one. But in my experience, too many language exchanges lasted only when the two people were interested in each other romantically. Without that interest, people got busy, schedules stopped matching, and the conversations faded out.

Tutors helped, but they were expensive and still felt like something I had to schedule. I wanted something I could come back to every day.

Then LLMs got really good at generating natural language. But most AI language apps seemed to be moving in the wrong direction: they were building another generic AI teacher or tutor.

Something felt wrong. The people we keep talking to for years are usually not our tutors.

I’m not saying tutors or teachers are bad. A good teacher can change your life. But for long-term conversation practice, we usually stay with people we are tied to, like family, or people we genuinely enjoy talking to.

You don’t stay for the lessons. You stay for the person.

That’s what I realized AI could do. It could be more than a teacher waiting to correct every mistake. It could become your own 오빠 or 언니: someone who remembers your stories, laughs at your jokes, and wants to hear how your day went.

The idea sounded simple. But actually, it wasn’t. The hardest part of language learning isn’t knowing what to do. It’s actually doing it every day. And that goes against human nature.

Learning a language is hard, and the long middle stage can be deeply frustrating. People often call it the intermediate plateau. For most of us, reaching a high level takes years, sometimes about as long as a college degree, although some people seem to learn much faster.

You tell yourself that you’ll practice every day. Often, you don’t. After a long day at work, your mind wants a break from hard things, not another task that makes you feel slow.

That is why language learning can’t depend on willpower alone. It has to be fun. It has to give you a reason to come back even on the days when studying is the last thing you want to do.

I don’t want to talk to a teacher every day. I want to talk to a friend. I want to share small things, tell jokes, complain about work, and feel that someone knows me a little better each time we talk.

That belief became Koddies. Your 오빠 and 언니 aren’t there only to correct you. They are there to make you want to speak again tomorrow.

I never expected these experiences to come together in one project, but they did. Koddies grew from my own inability to speak, my friends’ struggle to build a life in Korea, and my anger at a system that asks people to study for years before conversation becomes real.

I want Koddies to make conversation the beginning, not the reward at the end. That’s why I’m putting my life into building it.