The South Korean government is rolling out a program aimed at nurturing young talent in innovative technologies such as blockchain.

The Korean Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday said that the 2018 Innovative Growing Youth Talent Concentration Project will kick-off on August 10. It follows a successful inaugural round, which ran June 11 through July 10, CoinTelegraph reported.

The ministry has selected 40 courses for the six-month training program. The objective is to foster young talent in cutting-edge technologies including blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud, virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), and drones, among others.

“Although the youth unemployment issue is emerging as a social problem, the problem of job mismatch is serious,” Young-Kyung Won, a software policy officer at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said (as quoted by CoinTelegraph).

“Innovative growth through the fostering of young talent, we will foster talents that match the company's level of vision, offer new opportunities for young people who are looking for jobs, and actively support young people to create jobs.”

Earlier in June, reports suggested that the ministry was planning to allocate around $207 million to encourage the advancement of blockchain ecosystem in the country. More recently, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) encouraged domestic companies and regulatory authorities to collaborate on developing an integrated blockchain platform for stock trading.