How Orcar redefines car rental industry

The rental car lot at Jeju International Airport is one of those places where the gap between Korea's tourist ambitions and its infrastructure becomes painfully visible.

Foreign visitors arrive clutching international driving permits, only to encounter a process that is largely manual, often only in Korean or— if their documents don't match the expectations of the attendant on duty — simply unavailable to them.

For a small team of software developers, this friction was not just a travel annoyance.

Instead, it exposed a problem the industry had learned to live with.

Founded in 2021 by CEO Jung Jae-ho together with COO Park Jeong-ki and CTO Lee Jong-wan, Orcar is trying to digitize one of the most frustrating parts of international travel: renting a car in a foreign country.

Rather than focusing on the vehicles themselves, the company is using artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify the paperwork and identity checks that often prevent foreign visitors from getting behind the wheel.

Jeju origins Orcar's origins are rooted in the back end of the industry.

Jung, Park and Lee are all comp ...