NexV and Seocho Smart Youth Center Unveil 'Maum Han-gok Vending Machine' at Seoripul Music Festival

Seocho Smart Youth Center, in collaboration with NexV Co., unveiled the participatory AI mental health content "Maum Han-gok Vending Machine" at the 2026 Seoripul Music Festival, a music festival. The event was held on September 19-20 along Banpo-daero in Seoul.

The Seoripul Music Festival is a music festival hosted by Seocho-gu and organized by the Seocho Cultural Foundation. The program consisted of Classical Night, K-POP Night, Seoripul Jazz Night, Seoripul Kids Classic, and citizen participation programs.

The content was operated by reconfiguring NexV's existing "Maum Vending Machine" into a format tailored to the event. The redesign reflected the characteristics of the music festival, and the name was changed to "Maum Han-gok Vending Machine."

The "Maum Han-gok Vending Machine" can be used by having participants first choose the emotion closest to their current state of mind, then select 3 associative words. The emotion options were anger, sadness, anxiety, hurt, embarrassment, joy, love, gratitude, and inspiration.

Based on the user's choices, the device recommended 1 song suited to their current state of mind. The results screen provided the song title and singer, and users could listen to the music directly through a QR code.

A key feature of the setup was that it avoided assigning fixed songs to each emotion and instead curated a range of music based on user choices. The recommended music included relatively recent songs, as well as music from the 1990s through the 2010s that has been familiar across generations.

For teenagers, music from earlier generations may have been somewhat unfamiliar, but on site there was strong interest in discovering new songs. Responses included listening to songs they were hearing for the first time or checking the lyrics, and there were also signs of users newly embracing unfamiliar tracks by connecting them to their own emotions.

Over the 2 days of the festival, a total of 737 people used the Maum Han-gok Vending Machine. Participation from teenagers was especially active.

This on-site program added a new music experience within the festival venue by giving attendees a way to directly explore songs that matched their current state of mind, in addition to watching performances. It naturally connected self-exploration with music listening. Yoon Hyun-ji, CEO of NexV, said the one-song vending machine was content designed to help teenagers check their emotions through music and encounter new songs and lyrics.

Seocho Smart Youth Center and NexV also jointly operated a "Maum Post Box" on site. The "Maum Post Box" is AI mental health content designed to make it easier to share stories that are usually hard to bring up. Users could receive empathy and advice messages tailored to their stories, and the messages could be printed in postcard form for direct pickup.

Yoon said the company plans to expand into AI mental health content tailored to a variety of settings and user characteristics. She also said it plans to broaden the experience into a more familiar format.

The "Smart Customized Emotional Support Center" on the 5th floor of Seocho Smart Youth Center provides AI chatbot counseling, self-diagnosis tests, and free always-available trial access to smart mental health devices for teenagers and local residents, with referrals to expert counseling and treatment programs when needed during use.

Source: TECHWORLD · Kim Gyeong-ju
Original: https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=407645

References

• https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=407645