By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
The government of South Korea has announced it will invest heavily in a plan to deploy a national metaverse platform, and become the fifth largest metaverse market.
The country’s Ministry of Science and ICT has just pledged $186.7 million (223.7 billion Korean Won) to support new immersive technologies for corporate growth in the digital world. The funding will include both research and funding for content creators who work together to create an economically sustainable metaverse.
The metaverse refers to a shared virtual space in which users interact with each other through digital avatars and experience a virtual reality (VR) world. Such platforms have grown in popularity over recent years as people shifted their activities online amid the pandemic.
The Ministry’s technology roadmap is very much focused on a partnership with industry, creating public and private partnerships designed to help home-grown tech firms compete on the global stage.
Park Yun-Gyu, Minister of Information and Communication Policy, said this investment is just part of a much larger “Digital Deal” that will support the ongoing growth of immersive technologies.
Regional Governments Joining the National Partnership
The Digital Deal is also attracting investment from regional and municipal governments. Earlier this year the government of the national capital Seoul announced the investment of $291.4 million USD this year in cutting-edge digitization technologies like the metaverse, big data and artificial intelligence (AI).
Up to 1,067 projects, including those to be pursued by the city’s 25 districts, will benefit from the city’s investment plan for a “paradigm shift to digitization,” according to the city government. Almost half of that fund will go into projects that combine metaverse, big data and AI technologies to build digital infrastructure for enhanced civic services. Nearly 250 such projects will be funded by the city this year, creating more than 3,000 new jobs.
The Seoul project and the new national funding envelope are both considered key parts of a multistep, five-year development project under the Digital Deal.
“This year the key task of the new Digital Deal (is to create) a starting point for intensively fostering the expanded virtual world as a new hyper-connected industry,” said Park, adding the Ministry has created a technology roadmap outlining multiple steps in creating its metaverse.
First, the Ministry plans to develop a cutting edge metaverse platform based on a decentralised economic model to support the growth of digital content creators. That would mean the metaverse is based on blockchain technology, and would almost certainly include some type of cryptocurrency used in metaverse transactions.
A second step involves education and training, as South Korea creates a national curriculum for software engineering and humanities that will help develop metaverse content creators and developers.
Thirdly, the Ministry plans to host a new program called the Expanded Virtual World Developer Contest and the Hackathon, both events that aim to cultivate local talent.
And finally, the government plans to place major investments in selected companies in South Korea that have the ambition and technical ability to expand abroad via metaverse technology. This would include aid for small and medium companies and start-ups, which involves not just financial support, but creating support networks between companies and universities.
“We will spare no effort to support domestic companies, young developers, and creators so that they can find new growth opportunities in the infinite digital economy territory created by the expanded virtual world,” said Park.
This most recent investment is not the only money being poured into metaverse development. Local media reports the Ministry is also spending an additional $209 million USD into developing its own metaverse technologies, which includes Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality devices, new software, and hologram technologies. Holograms are considered particularly important for augmented reality programs, which may in the future see highly realistic representations of celebrities being used in licensed promotions for consumer products, for example.
https://www.thelicensingletter.com/shop/special-report-licensing-in-the-metaverse/
In addition to funding, the South Korean plan also calls for the creation of Virtual World Ethical Principles, which would be used to create a self regulatory program for private firms involved in the metaverse. Those principles would, for example, outline the regulations for protection of privacy, or keeping children safe from harm in a metaverse environment.
Announced originally in January, South Korea’s roadmap to the metaverse is intended to make the country the fifth largest market player in the development of the metaverse, and to create more than 200 new metaverse companies with individual valuations averaging $4.2 million USD. That process would also produce more than 40,000 highly trained people to act as industry experts by 2026 through a “Metaverse Academy” program.
Currently, most experts consider South Korea to be the 12th largest national participant in the development of the metaverse economy. However, while the metaverse roadmap was only announced this year, South Korea has been setting the table for this program for at least the past 12 months. Last year the Ministry of Science and ICT invested a much larger amount of roughly $2.2 billion USD to build national ‘hyper connectivity networks by 2025. That technology is considered crucial to handle widespread adoption of immersive technologies, which require much more bandwidth than traditional internet connectivity.
“The metaverse is a digital ‘New World’ with infinite possibilities,” Science and ICT Minister Lim Hye-sook said, adding the government will work closely with the industry and relevant ministries.
Why This Matters For The Licensing Industry
South Korea’s plan to become a leading player in metaverse development is not just being done out of scientific curiosity, but because the government believes much of the world’s commerce will in future be done in the metaverse. For that reason, South Korea is already planning to apply its new metaverse worlds to commercial applications.
Among other things, South Korea plans to build an online Korean language institute on metaverse platforms for foreigners, and to kick off several projects to apply metaverse technology in tourism, medicine and arts.
Most notably, that includes metaverse projects that will host and promote K-pop bands, creating built-in technologies to sell products and create revenue streams for South Korean artists and the companies that support them. To boost further growth, it will run a “K-Metaverse Academy” to help global metaverse startups enter the South Korean market and connect them with local content companies.
In the US, licensing is already a major part of the metaverse revenue picture, as consumer product licensors, fashion houses, art distributors, video game companies, and music publishers have all created major online shopping hubs or entertainment venues within various metaverse worlds, including Decentraland, the Sandbox, and Roblox, among others.