By PNA / Yonhap and U.S. News Agency / Asian

South Korea’s foreign ministry has selected about 750 people as personal assistants for the upcoming nuclear security summit in Seoul, which aims to bolster global safeguards and prevent nuclear terrorism, officials said Thursday.

A total of 748 assistants will be tasked with providing services in the fields of transportation, registration of participants and media support during the Nuclear Security Summit on March 26-27, the ministry said in a statement. The upcoming summit will be the second since U.S. President Barack Obama launched the summit in Washington in 2010.

The forthcoming summit is the largest international summit hosted by South Korea with top leaders from more than 50 nations and international organizations expected to participate.

“Voluntary participation and service are keenly necessary for our nation to enter a harmonized and advanced society,” Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said in a speech at a ceremony to launch the assistant program.

“I hope that your participation and service would significantly help our nation make the Nuclear Security Summit a success,” Kim said.

The assistants will receive training in their designated fields of service, which include conference management, protocol, interpretation and media center management, officials said.

During the ceremony, the ministry designated South Korean boy band JYJ as the third “PR ambassador” tasked with promoting the Seoul summit, following Korean-American pop singer Park Jung-hyun and TV actor Jang Geun-seok.

Seoul officials said one of the key topics at the Seoul summit would be how to protect vulnerable radioactive materials worldwide so terrorists could not use them to make a crude nuclear bomb.

Other key items to be discussed in Seoul will include “practical and concrete” ways to prevent the threat of nuclear terrorism and ensure the safety of atomic energy, they said.