South Korea has pledged to support blockchain development in its country. The government will invest $9 million that will carry out six or more blockchain pilots. The government promised to establish a well-defined roadmap that will contribute towards one of the most developed blockchain technology by the year 2022. The aim is to improve the trustworthiness of government agencies by increasing information sharing transparency in public service delivery through a mapped distributed network.
The Ministry of science and ICT released a report explaining the blockchain development master plan upon which a medium to long-term plan for expanding blockchain technology is based. The $9 million amount is meant to fund the strategy for a period running between 2018 to the end of 2019. These developments come a year after won, South Korea’s currency was ranked as the third most traded currency for Bitcoin. The government also released statistics showing that 80% of South Korean Youth are investing in cryptocurrency. These are probably some of the circumstances that could lead to a Korean government overly supportive of a blockchain strategy in its matters of finance. The government believes in taking advantage of the trends despite massive concern on the aftermaths of falling cryptocurrency prices.
Ministries Concerned
The key player in the investment will be the Ministry of Science and ICT. The department will partner with the rest of government agencies towards major developments of the industry. The areas of focus will mostly entail electronic voting, real estate transactions, export and import logistics, cross-border electronic document distribution, customs clearance and livestock supply chain management. The livestock supply chain, for instance, will create the need for a system that will automatically update information of livestock from their breeding to sales on a general distributed ledger.
Legal services, real estate transactions and taxations will be streamlined by the Ministry of Land and Transport. By integrating real estate, taxation, and legal services along with a blockchain, real-time transactions will be more efficient and manageable.
Conclusion
The report also lays down a plan for the development of a blockchain research center, which should cost approximately $720,000 million a year running up to six years. The research center will train students about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The goal is to educate up to 10,000 blockchain experts by the year 2022.
