South Korea invests $187 Million into Metaverse
The latest country to dive head first into the metaverse is South Korea. According to a recent report, the country will be making a notable $187 Million (223.7 Billion Korean Won) investment into its national metaverse project. The pledge comes straight from South Korea’s Ministry of ICT, Science, and Future Planning as they intend to help build a national metaverse ecosystem to support the expansion of corporate and digital growth nationwide. Head of Communication and Policy Department at the Ministry, Park Yungyu, stated in an announcement that this investment is part of a much broader “Digital New Deal” initiative that has its sight set on utilizing metaverse technology across many sectors and industries. The “Digital New Deal” is a set of policies designed to foster the growth of digital technologies. Park went on to add, “It is important to create a world-class metaverse ecosystem as the starting point to intensively foster a new hyper-connected industry.” The ministry has even noted that it expects its metaverse to have global reach because eventually it will provide seamless access to South Korean companies and plans to support growth by offering support for financial and digital development.
The government hopes this investment will allow businesses and industries to thrive in the new, quickly evolving digital economy and hopes it will even provide a platform for expanded virtual growth of things like media, education and cities more broadly. Per the official statement, the all encompassing digital metaverse ecosystem will be called “Expanded Virtual World.” The project will even be supporting content creators in multiple ways, including financially, in an attempt to attract top talent to help build the platform from the ground up. Some of the already discussed plans include a hackathon, a metaverse developer contest, and other community oriented activities. Surely other countries will take notice of this and watch the progress South Korea begins to make in hopes to learn from them. I wouldn’t be surprised if many other countries globally begin to initiate similar programs in an effort to leverage digital technology to propel their countries forward economically, technically, and socially.
