The government plans to announce on December 25th its final two candidates for the nation’s first-ever manned space mission.

The Science and Technology Ministry and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute said Thursday that they will release on Friday the list of ten final candidates for the fourth round of screening.

The ten will be tested on their adaptability to space at Russia’s Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

The ministry plans to narrow the list of ten candidates to six on December 16th before picking the final two.

From early next year, the two will be trained at a Russian space center for a year but only one will be chosen to board the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in April 2008.