On the 15th, the Government Foundation announced that it held the "2026 Scholarship Award Ceremony" at Sungkyunkwan University's Cho Byung-doo International Hall. A total of 430 scholarships, including 150 newly selected scholarship students (97 domestic scholarships and 53 overseas scholarships) and 280 existing scholarships, plan to provide a total of 12 billion won this year.
Korean scholarship students are undergraduate and graduate students from 45 universities, including Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, and KAIST, and overseas scholarship students are undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students from 17 universities around the world, including Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and MIT, and postdoctoral researchers. About 230 people, including 120 scholarship students from home and abroad and 110 family members and acquaintances, attended the ceremony to celebrate the new start of the new government scholarship students.
The government scholarship provides up to 12 million won per year to domestic scholarships, and foreign scholarships provide up to $60,000 for undergraduate students and up to $30,000 for graduate students depending on the country and school.
The Government Foundation is a scholarship foundation established by the late Chairman Lee Jong-hwan, who contributed 1.7 trillion won in total assets. Since its establishment in 2000, the cumulative scholarship payment has totaled 303.9 billion won until the first half of 2026, exceeding 300 billion won, and 14,000 government scholarships have received support based on the cumulative number of couples. Among them, more than 900 people have obtained doctoral degrees, establishing themselves as the largest scholarship foundation in Korea.
Lee Seok-joon, chairman of the Government Foundation, emphasized in a greeting, "In the midst of the development of AI technology and rapid changes in industrial structure, we need talented people who ask questions and create new paths on their own, not those who follow set answers."
The government-government foundation plans to continue scholarship projects so that talented people at home and abroad can focus on their studies and research without economic difficulties, and also work on sustainable social contribution activities where education and welfare grow together.
