Korea pays for the expertise: the official route to a KSP project

What KSP is

Since 2004, Korea’s finance ministry has run the Knowledge Sharing Program to share the country’s development experience. Over its first twenty years it delivered 761 advisory projects in 102 countries. The partner government defines the problem; Korean experts do the work; Korea covers the cost for eligible ODA-recipient countries.

What an institution receives

A one-year policy consultation spread across two calendar years. It produces a recommendation report built around the specific problem and a five-day capacity-building workshop for officials. Projects are budgeted at USD 250,000–500,000 and span 18 fields, from planning and public finance to health and medicine, education and HR development, energy and public administration. KSP funds knowledge; it does not accept projects that directly finance infrastructure construction or software systems.

One route, and only one

A government institution writes the proposal and submits it to its country’s coordinating institution, usually the body responsible for development or economic cooperation with Korea. The coordinating institution ranks all proposals in a priority list and sends them, with an official letter, to the Korean Embassy, which forwards them to the ministry in Korea. Proposals that skip the coordinating institution are not reviewed.

The clock runs once a year

In the last cycle, proposals were due at Korean embassies by 24 October 2025. Appraisal runs through 2026, approved projects are announced by the first quarter of 2027, and implementation runs 2027–2028. A decision taken this autumn shows results two years later, and a month’s delay can cost a full year. We could not find a public announcement of the next deadline at the time of writing; calls are often sent through embassies rather than published. A fast-track route exists for urgent matters such as emergency response or key state-led policies.

What changed in 2026

• Four priority areas: supply chains, AI and digital, green transition, and culture — set in Korea’s first medium-term KSP plan (2026–2028), approved in June 2026.
• From demand to strategy: more than 60% of new projects are to be strategic-planning projects by 2030, up from about 30%.
• From report to financing: more than 30% of projects are to be linked to EDCF or multilateral development bank financing by 2030, up from under 10%.
• Our reading: the strongest proposals will frame their problem in these priority areas and show from the start what happens after the report — who implements it and how it is financed. This is our inference from the published plan, not an announced criterion.

Examples from other countries

• Indonesia (2018/19): a joint consultation with the OECD on universal health coverage, carried out by Korea’s National Health Insurance Service.
• Chile (2023/24): digital tools to cut patient waiting times, with Kangbuk Samsung Hospital signing the letter of intent on behalf of the Korea Development Institute (KDI).
• In both cases the request was not for Korean technology but for a Korean way of working, transferred to a specific institution.

Five reliable ways to get rejected

• Sending the proposal straight to the embassy or ministry, bypassing the coordinating institution.
• Asking for direct financing of infrastructure construction or software systems, or for a commercial, for-profit project.
• Duplicating an existing or past project instead of building on it.
• Describing the problem vaguely, without making the case for necessity or the intervention.
• Detaching the request from the national plan, so it reads as one agency’s wish rather than a national priority.

Limits of this article

VisionSeek is independent and does not speak for the Korean government. Information comes from the official 2027/28 guideline and Korean press coverage of the new plan; the next cycle may change details. The final reference is always your country’s coordinating institution and the Korean Embassy.