A few days ago I posted why the Korean market is important. Here is part 2.

1) The NFT Scene

The NFT scene in Korea is quite unique in a sense that it is driven by the art scene. Digital art is a huge force that moves the NFT scene due to the communities that are created.

DADAZ currently has 85% unique owners

A good example is DADAZ. DADAZ is a collection of 888 pictures, all hand-crafted individually, that were gifted to people on Twitter. This created a huge following to the point where the community members volunteer as staff for DADAZ exhibitions and parties.

I have personally been to one of their parties, and I could only say it was eye-opening. There were hundreds of people, mostly not from crypto. As I work in crypto it was shocking to see so many people, even celebrities totally irrelevant to crypto coming to see his work, and sponsoring the exhibition.

Currently many fans, supporters, corporations, brands are eager to join the DADAZ train, and are participating to the DADAZ brand expansion.

DADAZ itself is an outlier, I must admit. But there are spaces that are trying to embrace the NFT subculture, for example, Hide Me Please is a Cafe and a federation of spaces. They have their own NFT collection that can be used for discount coupons. They also happen to be partners with DADAZ.

There are other spaces like LAZYY, Sooho, and Launchpad. So, you can see there are people who are literally creating physical spaces for NFT communities, and they are leveraging NFT themselves too.

Moreover, Korea has its own chapter of BAYC, Azuki, Clone X, Pudgy Penguins, and other NFT collections active, especially Pengus are ramping up their marketing game here.

2) Corporations

Korea is a country of conglomerates. Wealthy families own the country. I mean literally.

The amount of resources these corporations can pour into new ventures are unimaginably huge. They just create blockchain-focused subsidiaries in a blink of an eye.

For example, Lotte partnered with Polygon for their NFTs. Recently they released a series of NFTs that can be used as tickets for their Lotte World amusement park.

Lotte World is well-known for its in-doors area and ice rink.

Hyundai, Shinsegae, HYBE, Kakao, and other corporations are looking for ways to incorporate NFTs into their business models. How they do it is not innovative, but the fact they are experimenting on NFTs itself can be seen as a positive.

3) Gaming

The creators of Maple Story, Nexon, is one of the biggest gaming developers and publishers in Korea. They released Maple Story Worlds, a sandbox gaming platform where users can create their own content which can be monetized.

There are many other game developers trying to bring in crypto to their ecosystem. Krafton, known for its mega hit PUBG has its own metaverse project called Migaloo.

The creators of global gaming hits like PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, and NAVER Z, the operator of the largest metaverse in Asia, have announced a joint venture to create a new metaverse platform under the working title "Migaloo". The companies have invested KRW 48 billion (roughly $36.8 million USD) to develop the platform, which features a Create-to-Earn (C2E) system that allows content creators to build works in the metaverse that users can purchase and own using NFTs and blockchain technology.

Companies like NPIXEL, Neowiz, Wemade, Netmarble, Com2us, Kakao Games are all hopping on the bandwagon. Being successful is a different story, however, Korean game developers are leading the way in blockchain gaming while prominent game developers from the western hemisphere are facing huge backlash.