BK21 Project Holds Fifth Phase Reform Symposium: Focus on AI Talent and Regional Balance

The government has begun gathering opinions from academia ahead of the restructuring of the Brain Korea (BK) 21 Project.

On April 28, the Ministry of Education announced that, together with the National Research Foundation of Korea, it will hold the "BK21 Project Academic Symposium" at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul on April 29.

This symposium will propose and share the basic direction for the "Fifth Phase BK21 Project," which is scheduled to begin in September 2027. In the keynote lecture, Professor Lee Jihyung of Sungkyunkwan University will give a presentation on the topic "What Kind of Talent Should Universities Nurture in the Era of AI Transformation?" and will outline the objectives for the BK21 Project. Next, Professor Yoo Jaejoon of Seoul National University, who is in charge of the policy research for the planning of the fifth phase, will propose the "Basic Direction for the Fifth Phase Brain Korea (BK) 21 Project," which has been derived through research.

The research team plans to maintain the basic structure of the fourth phase, which supports education-research groups and graduate school innovation, while actively reflecting AI and regional balanced growth as core changes. They will also share plans to operate integrated degree programs that connect bachelor's, master's, and doctoral courses, and to institutionalize the status of postdoctoral researchers, thereby enabling "full-cycle support" through such system improvements. To maximize academic characteristics, the plan includes restructuring the current "Future Talent Development" into "Basic Academic Talent (Basic Talent)" and "Academic-Technology Convergence Talent (Convergence Talent)" and restructuring "Innovative Talent Development" into "Academic-Technology Convergence Talent (Convergence Talent)" and "AI Technology Convergence Talent (AI Talent)." For supporting graduate school innovation, the proposal is to maintain the current projects, select approximately 30 universities nationwide (with at least 5 in the metropolitan area and at least 4 in other regions), and divide them into an Advanced Track (10–15 universities) and a Specialization Track (15–20 universities) to further refine the system.

The Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea plan to gather further feedback from the field as well as from universities and academia, and to prepare a draft of the basic plan for the fifth phase BK21 Project by the end of this year.

The BK21 Project is a national initiative launched in 1999 with the goal of fostering master's and doctoral-level talent and cultivating world-class research-oriented universities. The fourth phase of the project, which spans seven years (from September 2020 to August 2027), is currently underway, supporting approximately 20,000 graduate students and early-career researchers each year.

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