Samsung gives insight into the South Korean Metaverse and NFT craze – Metaverse

At the very beginning of 2022, South Korean tech giant Samsung announced its foray into the metaverse and a new “NFT aggregation platform” designed for its smart TVs. In addition to the NFT TVs, Samsung has also launched a virtual experience within Decentraland, one of the most popular Metaverse gaming platforms. It is high time we take a look into the South Korean NFT world to see the latest developments.

Samsung NFT TV and presence in Decentraland

The idea of ​​the metaverse is no longer the distant, dreamy vision shared only by a limited number of crypto veterans that it once was. From the moment Facebook reinvented itself as “Meta,” several more tech giants around the world followed in the company’s footsteps and took some bold steps to venture into the Metaverse space.

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a valuation of $68.7 billion in an all-cash transaction. Half a month earlier, South Korean tech giant and conglomerate Samsung Electronics announced three brand new TV models for 2022, hosting an "intuitive, integrated platform for discovering, buying and trading digital works of art."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEcbs6cpbZY

On January 6, 2022, Samsung's official launch in the Metaverse, the Samsung 837X Opening Event opened its doors to Decentraland residents as part of the CES 2022 interactive event. During the three days of the launch event, Decentraland residents who visited and participated in the quests were able to collect four NFT badges within the experience. They visited various landscapes, watched Samsung promotional videos, enjoyed the DJ concerts, and at the end of the process, participated in a competition to win exclusive Samsung wearable NFTs in three different stages.

Although the special launch event is over, the Samsung 837X virtual experience in Decentraland remains open to everyone as a nice promotion and reminder of future events. Inside the Samsung 837X building, the three individual experiences - Connectivity Theater, Customization Stage and Sustainability Forest - demonstrated how a commercial brand could leverage the Web 3.0 metaverse space to create an interactive and entertaining experience to engage with audiences and consumers over the old-fashioned outdoor billboards or online advertising that Web 2.0 users were so tired of.

From time to time I read a lot of concerns from people passionate about the metaverse. Some of them fear that the future of major Metaverse gaming experiences could be full of giant corporations from our reality that have bought a huge amount of land and stuffed everything with tasteless and ugly advertising. Samsung, alongside a few other global brands that were first to dive in, seems to be at least trying to set a good example and standard for how their Metaverse experience should be engaging and sincere to the Metaverse generation.

The South Korean NFT market and becoming a leading force in the metaverse

On January 13, South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb CEO Heo Baek-young said in an interview that the exchange was in the process of developing an NFT exchange that would help the company "remain competitive" against other domestic Korean exchanges. Korean media also reported that the NFT exchange developed by Bithumb is likely to be backed by LG, Samsung's local and global competitor in the manufacturing of electronic devices and smart devices. Will the future NFT exchange Bithumb become a practical and important NFT exchange for South Korean NFT artists? Probably.

Ahead of this launch of an NFT exchange developed by an influential crypto exchange, there are already a few independent South Korean NFT websites attempting to promote a number of Korean NFT artists and their artwork.

KoreanNFT.com, for example, is a fairly new website that features NFT works from over 160 Korean NFT artists. According to the website, Korean NFT founder Donglee Han is also a Korean NFT community leader who helps other Korean NFT artists become members of the international NFT community.

Donglee graduated from UCLA with a major in art history and is a visual artist based in LA, and her NFT works can be found in SPACE776, an art gallery with locations in New York and Seoul that exhibits early to mid-career artists working in a variety of media. These range from traditional oil painting to live multimedia art and NFT art. On this website there is an Opensea link on each artist's individual page.

A cool project I found is called DRUG, created by the artist named DRUGer (드러거). There are currently 20 items in his DRUGer collection. Each artwork features an animal with flashing visual effects (epilepsy warning) simulating an “eye drug.”

If you think that the burgeoning and bustling NFT scene in South Korea is just about tech companies, NFT artists and their artwork, you are missing out on a lot more of what is going on in the country.

In November 2021, the super-famous South Korean music agency HYBE, which brings the world-famous Korean pop band BTS (Dynamite, Butter, Permission to Dance, I'm sure you've heard some of their hits), signed a joint venture with South Korean fintech company Dunamu to launch non-fungible tokens (NFTs) featuring the popular band as well as other artists. In the unexpected realm of politics, South Korean lawmaker Lee Kwang-jae announced in December 2021 that he would begin accepting crypto donations and issuing NFT receipts with his picture and campaign promises to his supporters.

Korean retail is also in the national race to adopt blockchain-based NFT technology and applications. According to the Korea Herald, online retail company CJ Olive Networks recently announced a partnership with local blockchain company Galaxia Metaverse to sell NFT artwork and fashion items. Lotte Home Shopping, another leading retail company in South Korea, announced the launch of an NFT marketplace in April this year and plans to sell NFTs created with its own virtual models and virtual fashion items. The list goes on and on.

Why is this happening? Park Sung-joon, head of the Blockchain Research Center at Dongguk University, said the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated online shopping and is driving retail giants to try to gain an upper hand in new areas such as NFTs by leveraging their retail channels.

South Korea's Ministry of Science even announced a five-year plan aimed at putting the nation at the forefront of the global metaverse race. As reported by the Korea Herald, the country aims to become the fifth largest metaverse market by 2026. To achieve this, the government plans to support at least 40,000 professionals and 220 companies specializing in the metaverse.

What motivated the South Korean government to make such a serious commitment to win the Metaverse race? If the Fourth Industrial Revolution of advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0 has already become the present, gaining the upper hand in the next round of revolution, be it the Fifth Industrial Revolution of human-machine collaboration or the migration of humans into the Metaverse Land could provide a huge advantage in technological innovation and economics.

In the eternal shadow of complex geopolitics and uncertainty, limited by natural resources and regional power games, South Korea has been focused on the path of developing technology and top brands with global recognition for forty years. If we believe that the Metaverse will be the next global chapter for most developed countries, then there is no reason not to strive for success and dominance.

How is the NFT market regulated in South Korea?

Last but not least, the regulations. Artworks and art trading are regulated by the government and regulators like any other business. Local regulations on avant-garde artworks such as non-fungible tokens undoubtedly impact the development of the local market.

South Korean media reported In November last year, the country's financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), confirmed that NFTs do not fall within the definition of "virtual assets" and therefore are not regulated by FSC. However, this does not mean that the local NFT art trading market is not regulated at all. There is an opportunity to regulate NFTs as securities through the Financial Supervisory Service, another regulator. NFTs that act as “security tokens” and provide royalties to the holder would be considered a regulated entity.

At a time when tech giants, the retail industry and even the entertainment industry in South Korea are all testing the NFT investment waters, local regulators must actually weigh the options and find the best approach.

Have you found any Korean NFT artwork that particularly appeals to you?

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