Dongwon Group Honorary Chairman Kim Jae-cheol Donates 50 Billion Won to KAIST

Honorary Chairman Kim Jae-chul of Dongwon Group. Photo by KAIST

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] Dongwon Group Honorary Chairman Kim Jae-cheol (photo) has generously donated a large sum to KAIST.

KAIST announced on the 16th that it received a donation of 50 billion KRW from Honorary Chairman Kim. On the same day, Kim held a pledge ceremony at KAIST's Daejeon campus and agreed to donate the funds from his personal assets over the next 10 years according to an annual plan.

KAIST plans to use the donation to nurture core talent and conduct research in the domestic artificial intelligence (AI) field.

Honorary Chairman Kim said, "I decided to donate because I believe that nurturing talent is crucial for our country to take the lead in AI and join the ranks of advanced nations in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution," adding, "I expect KAIST, which gathers scientific prodigies and excellent faculty, to take the lead as a flagship to accelerate domestic AI development."

KAIST operates a Graduate School of AI. This graduate school was the first among domestic universities to be selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT's '2019 AI Graduate School Support Project' in March 2019 and opened in August of the same year.

As of the end of last month, the Graduate School of AI has recruited 21 faculty members, including 13 full-time professors and 8 adjunct professors from AI research institutes of global companies such as Google, IBM Watson, and Microsoft. There are currently 138 students enrolled: 79 in the master's program, 17 in the integrated master's and doctoral program, and 42 in the doctoral program.

Meanwhile, KAIST has received three major donations (each over 10 billion KRW) this year alone, ahead of its 50th anniversary in February next year.

The first major donor was Chang Byung-gyu, chairman of Krafton, who donated 10 billion KRW in January. In July, Lee Soo-young, chairman of Gwangwon Industry, donated real estate worth approximately 67.6 billion KRW to support the Singularity Professorship system.

Honorary Chairman Kim became the third major donor this year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.