Not just China, South Korea is betting big on metaverse too – plans to spend $187 million to build its national ecosystem, form a Digital New Deal

• South Korea wants to become the fifth-largest metaverse market in the world by 2026.
• Seoul aims to become the first city to enter the metaverse.
• The government wants to nurture 40,000 professionals and 220 companies specialized in metaverse technologies.

The information technology ministry of South Korea has pledged 223.7 billion KRW, approximately $186.7 million, to create a metaverse ecosystem for the country. In a statement, the Ministry of ICT, Science and Future Planning said the goal is to nurture youth experts in the metaverse and create a favourable business ecosystem around the concept.

Other than creating experts, the Ministry’s statement detailed three other objects for the future, which include creating an expanded virtual world (translated from Korean). The government also wants the metaverse platform to focus on industrial convergence and lifestyle, using it for growing Korea’s education industry, media and its cities.

Further, the statement also said that content creators will get support from the government’s strategy. The Ministry will also host hackathons, developer events etc. aimed at fostering the country’s metaverse community, while the statement also mentions forming favourable regulatory systems and laws in order to favour the metaverse.

Kicking into a higher gear

This is not the first time South Korea and its government have shown interest in the metaverse though. It reinforces moves the country’s corporations and government have already been making.

Last month, the government said it will nurture 40,000 professionals and 220 companies that are specialized in metaverse technology, according to the Korea Herald. At the time, the government said that it wanted to make South Korea the fifth largest metaverse market by 2026.

The country’s capital city, Seoul, also wants to become the first city to enter the metaverse. In November, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced that it wants to create something called “Metaverse Seoul”, which would provide a virtual communication ecosystem for the city’s municipal administration.

That said, Korea still needs to clear some challenges that the industry has pointed out on multiple occasions. For instance, the country doesn’t allow the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in gaming, and also prohibits games from issuing their own tokens. Given that South Korea is amongst the largest gaming markets in the world, that’s an issue many have objected to in the past.

The government is taking heed of these issues too. “It is important to create a world-class Metaverse ecosystem as the starting point to intensively foster a new hyper-connected industry,” said Park Yungyu, head of communication and policy department at the Ministry of ICT, Science and Future Planning in South Korea. The government calls this the “Digital New Deal”, which is a set of policies that aim to help build metaverse platforms.

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