Chinada's CEO, Sunwoo Kim, talks about their language learning service, Chinatan

Based in Seoul, Chinese language education company CHINADA have secured $1 million USD from Soft Bank Ventures and Coolidge Corner Investment.

Their digital educational program 'Chinatan' is unlike other typical systems that focus on grammar and reading. Instead it is aimed towards improving conversational skills. It simulates real life situations, such as markets, restaurants, university campus, hotels, etc. This allows students to experience day to day situations experienced by locals.

To build their content library Chinada recorded over 300 local Chinese from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other locations over the course of 20 months. These libraries are available on PC, mobile, tablet and other sources. Each recording lasts for around 15 minutes to maximize effectiveness.

Investment manager Dong-hwan Kim from Soft Bank Ventures explained: "After the Korea-China free trade agreement (FTA) we can expect a dramatic increase in trade between China and Korea. So the demand for Chinese language programs will rise exponentially, but there are few services geared towards day to day coversation. We are expecting great results from Chinatan as they are able to reach a very wide audience with their online, mobile language program. Their excellent quality of content is believed to become an industry changer in the Chinese language learning market.”

Sun-woo Kim, a representative of Chinada added: "Just as current world-renowned English education companies come from countries in close proximity to England and United States, our goal is to be the global standard for contemporary Chinese language programs."