Meta’s South Korea representative says the country has one of the best environments for the metaverse business to thrive in, at its first press conference in Korea after rebranding from Facebook.
Fast facts
- At Meta Korea’s VR (virtual reality) art media showcase, Jung Ki-hyun, the country director, said South Korea is accommodating to the metaverse business on account of its receptivity, penetration rate of VR devices such as Oculus Quest, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) environment and potential as a domain for content developers and creators. According to a report by Korea’s science ministry, the country’s VR market showed over 36% average annual growth rate in 2018, and expects the market to be worth more than US$2.5 billion by 2024.
- Jung underlined the need to develop an ecosystem that is accommodating to users and creators ahead of applying advanced concepts such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens). According to Jung, Meta is putting efforts into building the metaverse ecosystem and providing opportunities for creators through a billion-dollar fund. He added that a creator’s virtual goods will become widely accepted through NFT technology, with aims to make them fully interoperable among various platforms.
- “People would not want to live in a metaverse where there’s limited interoperability between one metaverse to another,” said Park Hye-jin, vice head professor of Venture Capital MBA at aSSIST, in an interview with Forkast.News. Park said the metaverse industry needs to prepare a comprehensive infrastructure, such as hardware development and network stability, to provide a seamless and immersive experience for users.
- The VR art media showcase took place Tuesday in the Horizon Workroom, Meta’s virtual reality meeting room. Works of VR artist Yeom Dong-kyun were showcased ahead of the press conference.
