By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter

The education ministry will develop and distribute a software program to protect young people from obscene and lewd Web sites.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said Tuesday it will distribute the program blocking such ``harmful'' information to parents for free from March.

For this, the ministry has worked with some private firms to develop the program and upgraded existing ``nanny'' programs. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Communications Standards Commission for the project.

It will soon name a program developer and finish all test-runs by mid-February.
Once the program is introduced, parents can download it from the ministry's homepage.

``The ministry invested its own budget for this program, and it will be a lot easier for parents to use,'' a ministry official said.

kswho@koreatimes.co.kr