How hard is it to get into PhD universities?

I’m entering my 2nd semester of my Masters program in Bioinformatics in the spring. I will be defending my thesis at the end of my masters, neuorinfomatics focused.

I’ll have been a part of a manuscript for one of my PhD upperclassmen’s paper ; Done research with cognitive science & LLMs, specifically fMRI and fNIRs. Was software engineer intern focusing on data analytics and geo spatial analysis.

My research professor has a connection in KAIST that I’m hoping to connect with.

I’ll be planning on doing more but I’m more asking what is threshold/bare minimum to be even considered? I understand that I should do research that relates closer to the labs that I’m wanting to apply for but is there a general minimum?

I’m planning on applying Fall of 2026.