Old chaebols also join the game! The trend of Korean metaverse is getting stronger and stronger

The recently popular concept of the metaverse has swept the world, and even attracted SK Square, an investment subsidiary of the South Korean chaebol SK Group, to join in, which is very rare.

On December 13, SK Executive Vice President Huh Seok-joon, 48, said that last month he had split his investment department SK Square into an independent investment company in preparation for entering the metaverse field.

SK Group is one of South Korea's oldest chaebols rooted in traditional manufacturing. Such aggressive bets have been rare among South Korean chaebols that have been controlled by families for decades.

Because given that the technology and software needed to realize the Metaverse vision are still in their infancy, investments in the Metaverse may take years to pay off.

Currently, the concept of the metaverse is extremely popular around the world, and companies that have sensed the opportunity want to get in as soon as possible to get a piece of the pie. Bloomberg quoted Huh as saying:

Our business needs to evolve into the Metaverse, the way we communicate with our customers will shift from mobile phones to the Metaverse, and new cryptocurrencies will be used as new currencies on our platform.

Huh went on to say that SK Group will develop and operate a metaverse platform called “Ifland.” He said:

Ifland is a virtual space platform that, like many of its peers, allows users to create their own avatars and communicate in 18 different virtual spaces, including meeting rooms and outdoor venues.
At the same time, a virtual space can accommodate up to 130 people. It is currently expected to be available for Android and iOS, and an Oculus Quest version will be released in the future.

Metaverse is extremely popular in South Korea

The Metaverse is a virtual environment imagined by humans. In the Metaverse, people can use the Internet to interact with others, replacing the existence of flat browsers and mobile applications.

The most well-known company in the field of Metaverse is Facebook (now renamed Meta). In South Korea, in addition to SK Square, well-known companies such as Naver and Kakao are accelerating their layout in the field of Metaverse.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea recently released a five-year plan for the metaverse: starting from 2022, it will invest 3.31 million US dollars (about 3.9 billion won) to build a metaverse city and provide various public services and cultural activities in the metaverse.

The plan is mainly divided into three phases: start-up (2022), expansion (2023-2024) and completion (2025-2026). In terms of specific operation methods, starting next year, the Korean Metaverse Platform will use virtuality to drive reality.

Relevant personnel from the Seoul Metropolitan Government said that the "Metaverse Seoul" platform is based on the most advanced digital technology, which can easily overcome difficulties such as time, space constraints and language barriers when providing public services, and can be expanded to all areas of administrative services, which will greatly improve the work efficiency of civil servants.

In addition, Wall Street Journal previously mentioned that in October this year, four Metaverse-themed ETFs were listed in South Korea, and their prices soared by more than 24% in just one month, becoming the new darling of the investment community. It can be seen that funds also favor the Metaverse sector.

These four ETFs are from KB Asset Management, NH Amundi Asset Management, Mirae Asset Management and Samsung Asset Management. Among them, Samsung Asset's ETF product is an actively managed fund, and the other three products are passively managed funds that follow the Metaverse-related index.