Korea University (KU) and the Korea Research Foundation of the Ministry of Education announced in August 16, that in the BK21 project, KU managed to pit a total of 24 names on the final selection of corporation list. The awards were distributed by 13 in science technology, eight in humanities and three in convergence technology. This ranked KU the first place among domestic colleges and proved KU’s outstanding level. The project became a momentum for KU to receive in the future more government support to expand to a world-class research centered university.                                                                             

KU was selected for numerous fields for awards despite small-scale project teams. There was no certain area that the Ministry of Education favored, but KU received awards with no distinction between subject and scale. Other universities such as Seoul National University (SNU) ranked 2nd with 22 names and Yonsei University (YU) ranked 3 rd.         

The awards were able to show that KU still held firm power in the humanities section and also now rivals SNU in the field of science and technology thanks to rapid development in the area.                                                                                                                            

Financial governmental support is 2nd to that of SNU, which is 22.3 billion won. The support money will be distributed throughout the next seven years. Support will be concentrated on graduate students and post-doctoral students. Furthermore contract professors, post-doctoral candidates and other researchers will be given money to expand their research base. Financial support for research staff studies and the existing workforce will lead to the empowerment of young researchers who are the hope for the future of innovative research.                                  

KU prospects that the outcome of the BK21 project will be a strong incentive to gather up more talent and resources to the university.