KOICA Scholarship Program (CIAT Fellowship)

KOICA is South Korea's official development agency, the Korean equivalent of JICA or GIZ, and its CIAT Fellowship funds mid-career officials from partner countries to take a Master's degree in Korea. Sri Lanka is a long-standing KOICA partner country and receives an allocation every cycle. The funding is complete: tuition, a monthly living allowance, return airfare, medical insurance and a settlement allowance, with the degree taken at a Korean university such as the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, KAIST, Yonsei, Kyung Hee, Ajou or Seoul National, depending on the field. Around fifteen degree programmes are offered across a cycle, clustered in public management, digital government, health, agriculture and fisheries, climate change, social economy and economic development. The honest limitation, and it is a hard one, is who can apply. This is a government-to-government scheme. Sri Lankan candidates are nominated by the Department of External Resources under the Ministry of Finance, and the call is circulated to ministries, departments, provincial councils and state agencies. If you work in the private sector or are a recent graduate with no public-service post, you are not eligible no matter how strong your profile — you should look at the Global Korea Scholarship instead, which is open to all. For a Sri Lankan public officer in their late twenties to thirties, though, KOICA is arguably the single best-value overseas Master's on offer, because your salary and post at home are usually protected by study leave while Korea pays for everything else.