South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT on Wednesday visited a top-performing company in its "ICT Credit-Linked Project Internship" programme, and held an awards ceremony at Seoul's COEX.

The ICT Credit-Linked Project Internship is an industry-academia cooperation programme that supports undergraduates to carry out internships at domestic and overseas AI and IT companies and have the work recognised for academic credit. Launched in 2015, a total of 3,053 people participated through last year.

The average employment rate for programme participants who graduated from on-site training placements in 2022-2025 was 89.3 percent. That was 18.1 percentage points higher than the 71.2 percent average employment rate for engineering graduates from higher education institutions over the same period.

At the awards ceremony, 15 top participants received prizes after being selected based on evaluations of internship project outcomes carried out from the second half of last year through the first half of this year. The Pinkfong Company was named an outstanding company and received an award from the deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT.

Ahead of the ceremony, the ministry visited Nota AI, a participating company, to check the internship site and held a meeting with participating students and senior engineers. Students proposed diversifying internship projects and extending the duration.

Park Tae-wan (박태완), MSIT director-general for ICT industry policy, said, "We will continue to work closely with universities and companies and provide ongoing support so that it can be of practical help to young people."