This study evaluated the effects of South Korea's Brain Korea 21 (BK 21) project, a special research funding program designed to build world-class research university. The effects were measured by examining the frequency of article publications in SCI journals during the 1995-2005 period. The results of the analysis indicated that the growth of research publications from Korean research universities was increased significantly following the implementation of the BK 21 project in 1999. In addition, during the period under study, four research universities (Yonsei, Korea, Sungkyunkwan, and Hanyang) were newly emerged. However, the growth rate of research publications was not different from that of the US and Japan, and even less than that of China. Thus, although the BK 21 project contributed to the growth of research publications of Korean universities, the project did not lessen the gap between Korea universities and world-class research universities in the US or Japan in number of publications.