On November 4, 2013, Hanyang University(HYU) was selected as one of the university recipients for  Brain Korea 21 Plus(BK21 Plus), which is a Korean government sponsored program for human resource development. As a result, HYU will receive approximately KRW50 billion  for seven years in government funding for BK21 research.

HYU has two projects that were selected for the program, and they include “Group for Fostering Creative Talent in Smart Tourism” on the Seoul campus, and “Group for Training Creative Talent Who Can Lead Global Cultural Contents” from the ERICA campus. The BK21 Plus program, whose objective is to produce  next generation  world class leaders by upgrading research infrastructure and graduate-level training in Korea, consists of  three areas:  Fostering Global Talent, Fostering Future-based Creative Talent, and Fostering Specialized Experts. HYU’s two projects selected for the program are included in the Fostering Specialized Experts area.

Seo Jin-seok, the Manager of Research Promotion Team at HYU said, “Since being chosen for the BK21 program, it is now apparent that HYU possesses a competitive edge in the field of fostering expertise. In addition to supporting the two projects chosen for the program, HYU will make great efforts to also support the other projects that were not selected for the program.”

There are however, some voices of criticism regarding the decrease in the amount of support by BK21 compared to the previous support from 2006 to 2013. Furthermore, there have been complaints about the fairness between the Seoul and ERICA campuses, with respect to amount of supporting being given.