Forpang

The problem

Foreign residents in Korea rely on scattered word-of-mouth for everything from finding an English-speaking dentist to buying halal groceries, with no single trusted surface and a hard language barrier in between.

What I built

A Next.js and NestJS platform combining a verified services directory, halal e-commerce, tour booking and a points-based community forum. Search is a hybrid engine fusing keyword matching with semantic OpenAI embeddings through Reciprocal Rank Fusion, which is what makes multilingual queries land. A multi-role system separates User, Business and Admin with JWT role guards and isolated dashboards.

Impact

Serves the expat community in the South Korean market with localized KakaoTalk and email notifications driving transactional engagement.

Key features

• Hybrid keyword + semantic search fused with Reciprocal Rank Fusion
• Multi-role system (User, Business, Admin) with JWT role guards
• E-commerce and scheduling with geolocation mapping
• Redis-backed cart caching and automated vendor payout logic
• Real-time user-to-business messaging over WebSockets
• Localized KakaoTalk and email notification pipeline