Korean Government To Lead 6 Blockchain Pilots With a $9 Million Fund

The government in South Korea will apparently invest 10 billion Korean won ($9 million) in order to support the blockchain development in the country. The plans are to carry out six different pilots all based on the blockchain technology.

The news comes from a report after the country’s Ministry of Science and ICT published a blockchain development strategy this Thursday. According to the agency, the government’s plans are to invest $9 million in total until the end of 2019 and therefore help the country “pursuit a medium to a long-term plan for expanding blockchain technology.”

This will take the ICT ministry to work with other government agencies as well – conducting blockchain pilots in the public sector. The work will focus on livestock supply chain management, online voting, shipping logistics, real estate transactions, cross-border e-document distribution and customs clearance.

Obviously, the goal is for the blockchain technology to improve the information sharing efficiency as well as transparency in the public services – all by using a distributed network.

For example, the livestock system will be implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in Korea – updating the information of livestock from their breeding, shipping to sales on a distributed ledger. In a similar way, the pilot on the real estate industry will have the government collaborate with the Ministry of Land and Transport.

As the agency said:

“We will establish a roadmap for developing blockchain technology and plan to secure 90% of the technology level by 2022 compared to the world’s top countries,”

In addition to this, the ministry will invest more than $720,000 – or 800 million won – a year for up to six years in order to expand its blockchain research center and eventually nurture more than 10,000 blockchain specialists by 2022.