Brain Korea 21 (BK 21) is a national project that intensively supports master’s degree and Ph.D. students, as well as post-doctoral researchers and junior faculty, to develop highly-educated human resources in more advanced research areas. It is specifically aimed to develop research personnel and environment and establish globally renowned research-oriented graduate institutes through this project. Government funding of 1,300,000,000,000 Korean won was invested from 1999 to 2005 in the first phase, and 2,030,000,000,000 Korean won from 2006 to 2012 in the second phase.

From Yonsei University, 33 projects were selected and 23,900,000,000 Korean won is being spent on the projects annually.