South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity will hold the "One-Panel Comic Contest Imagining the Future of Science and Technology," the ministry said on Sunday.

The contest will be held under the theme "In 10 years, how science and technology will change our lives." It is an event in which participants depict the future society that will change with advances in science and technology in a single scene.

The contest is divided into an "original one-panel comic" that participants produce themselves with hand-drawn or digital drawings and a "generative AI one-panel comic" that uses generative AI. Participants in the generative AI category must also submit the prompt they wrote along with the image.

Each category will have student and adult divisions. Works can be submitted from Sunday until 4 p.m. on Sept. 18 through the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity's online submission system. A total of 18 works will be awarded, with 20.5 million won in prize money. The grand prize will be awarded to 4 winners, who will receive an award from the deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT. Winners of the excellence award and merit award will receive an award from the foundation's chair.

Key winning works will be sealed and stored in a time capsule in connection with the opening ceremony of the 2027 Korea Science Festival. The time capsule will be opened in 2036 to see how the future envisioned by the public in 2026 aligns with reality 10 years later.

Lee Jun-bae (이준배), director-general for Future Talent Policy at the ministry, said he hoped the contest would provide an opportunity for diverse generations, from students to adults, to imagine and share the future that science and technology will create.