The South Korean government will invest to support blockchain development in the country, with plans to carry out six blockchain-based pilots. The investment is approximately Korean won 10 Bln (or $9 Mln)

Reported CoinDesk Korea, the country’s Ministry of Science and ICT published a blockchain development strategy in June, 2018. The agency stated that the government was planning to invest $9 million continuously till the end of 2019 as part of the country’s pursuit of “a medium to long-term plan for expanding blockchain technology.”

It will take the lead to work with other government agencies to operate blockchain pilots in the public sector by focusing on livestock supply chain management, customs clearance, online voting, real estate transactions, cross-border e-document distribution and shipping logistics, said the ICT ministry.

Regarding to the document, the aim is to improve the information sharing efficiency and transparency in these public services by using a blockchain-based distributed network.

The ICT ministry explained it would cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to set up a system updating the information of livestock from their shipping, breeding, shipping as well as sales on a distributed ledger.

Essentially, each party on the supply chain that performs as a node on the blockchain. In case there is a problem that could be informed more instantly, the follow-up period could be reduced from 6 days to less than 10 minutes, the document said.

Equivalently, the pilots on the real estate industry will be implemented with the Ministry of Land and Transport. It expected that the real estate transactions could turned more productive and streamlined for consumers as their information could be shared automatically among different parties by integrating real estate, taxation and legal services with a blockchain.

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

Furthermore, the ministry told it would invest 800 million won (or $720,000) a year for up to six years to expand a blockchain research center. Nurturing students on the immature technology and fostering 10,000 blockchain specialists by 2022 are the objectives of this investment.