South Korea is planning to spend around 47 billion won ($40 million) in the next six years on graphene technologies. The Korean government (or specifically the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, MOTIE) wants to help local companies to commercialize graphene, and more than half of the investments will be given to small businesses.
Korea is ranking third in the world by number of graphene patents. Samsung is the company that holds the largest amount of graphene patents in the world, while Korea's Sungkyunkwan University is the world's leading research institute (if we rank by graphene patents, again).
Korea is not the only country pushing for graphene. The UK announced £50 million (over $75 million) graphene drive in February 2012 (and later that year they allocated a further sum of £21.5 million), while the EU launched a ten-year, €1 billion research initiative aims to accelerate commercialization of graphene based products.
